


Weiß Kreuz

by sorion



Category: Torchwood, Weiß Kreuz
Genre: Action/Adventure, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-07
Updated: 2011-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-26 04:56:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 45,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/278936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sorion/pseuds/sorion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been four years since the 456. Four years since the fall of the museum. They are coming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hydra

**Author's Note:**

> AN WK: Post Esszett, no Glühen. Assumed co-op of Weiß and Schwarz, established in the four years prior to this story.  
> AN TW: Four years post season 3. No season 4.  
> The story starts with WK; TW characters will enter in chapter 4.

  
  


 

His typing stopped when Brad Crawford was hit with a dreadfully tedious premonition. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes and sighed. After a moment he continued his typing and his eyes flew over the eerily lit screen, with the practiced ease of someone being used to teammates with the mental maturity of fifteen year old schoolboys.

Somewhere behind him, he could hear tiny footsteps and wondered how Farfarello could have missed another conveniently helpless life form to torture. Since they had the man on the team, he might as well make himself useful around the house. Well, around the room in the abandoned hotel, this one in Paris. It wasn’t exactly a house, even though they had the whole thing to themselves.

Subconsciously, he checked for all the members of their rather randomly assembled team, but he wasn’t worried enough to track them with a directed premonition. It was now ten past midnight, which meant that Farfarello was hopefully out for the count from his meds, Fujimiya and Hidaka were still in London, the kids would return at around four from their “errands”, and Kudou and Schuldig would be back in three, two, one...

Crawford groaned when he heard a window downstairs burst to pieces and the two men in question stumble up the stairs, just as his prediction had told him.  
He sometimes wondered if it was a good thing that he couldn’t just filter out useless and annoying premonitions or not. Sometimes they vaguely amused him, but most of the time – almost all of the time, since the somewhat involuntary fusion of their two teams – they were just randomly annoying.

The moment the door opened, he said, without waiting for the lengthy rant he had seen coming: “Shut up. I’m not interested.”

When his both visually and temperamentally fiery lover opened his mouth, nonetheless, he added: “And I am particularly not interested in who did what, first.”

The two angry men in the doorway were startled into silence, and their annoyance quickly melted into tired amusement.

Kudou snorted and smirked. “You should keep your boyfriend on a leash, Crawford.”

Crawford nodded. “I have considered it.”

Schuldig smirked, happily and swaggered towards the other man to drop himself into his lap and effectively keep him from working. He slung his arms around Crawford’s neck.  
“Kinky, Bradley.”

“Do not tempt me.”

“Yes, please,” Kudou agreed. “Don’t tempt him. These walls are too fucking thin.”

Schuldig’s smirk widened and he directed it at the distressed looking comrade. “Not too thin for me, Youji dear.”

“Don’t I know it.” Kudou rolled his eyes and left the room. “I’m going to sleep. Or try to, at least. Let me know when the kids are back, yeah?” The last sentence was yelled over his shoulder.

“Don’t let the bed rats bite you,” Schuldig yelled in return.

Kudou flipped him the bird out of general principle, but since he had already left the room, the German didn’t see it. Not that that annoying pest needed his eyes to know what other people did.

{I saw what you did there, you know.}

Kudou rolled his eyes. {Shut up. Go fuck your boyfriend or something, but spare me your presence. I’ve had enough of it for tonight.}

Schuldig snickered in Crawford’s lap. At the other man’s disapproving look he shrugged. “What?”

“Leave him alone.” Crawford was as tired as the rest of them. Schuldig was tired, too, but when he was in a playful mood, he sometimes forgot. He’d definitely remember the next morning. Schuldig always remembered just how tired and annoyed he was in the mornings.

Schuldig smiled benignly. “Don’t you want to know how the hit went?”

“If you think I would have let you two funny girls go in there alone if I had thought that there would be even the hint of a problem, you have another thing coming.”

Schuldig leaned into a kiss and hummed when Crawford let him. “Is that boss speak for ‘good work, boys’?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Crawford admitted.

“Fuck me silly?”

Crawford snorted, but he smirked. “Go to sleep, Schuldig. Lots of work, tomorrow.”

Schuldig sighed in a fittingly martyr fashion, but slipped out of Crawford’s lap. He _was_ pretty damn tired, and he knew it. “You gonna wait up for the kids?”

Crawford nodded, his eyes were already on the screen, again. “Not really my kind of idea of a good time, doing you in this ratty, old hole.” He circumspectly added, he knew that Schuldig would otherwise come with another ‘you don’t want me, anymore’ speech at an inopportune moment.

Schuldig winked at him. “Make sure you get us somewhere more pleasant when we get out of here, then.”

With his eyes back on the screen, Crawford allowed a relieved breath to leave his mouth. The Paris division was dead, then. It wasn’t like there wouldn’t be a new team before long, but as of now, they had maybe a couple of weeks of breathing time. He briefly considered leaving the kids in Paris, while taking the others to London with him to meet Hidaka and Fujimiya; God knew those two should have the chance to act their age for once, and Paris seemed the right place and for two weeks the right time.  
More than likely, they would refuse, but it never hurt to consider several options. Watching the possible outcome opened fascinatingly unexpected premonitions.

Killing operatives all over the world sometimes felt like chopping off a hydra’s heads; before long, there would be three new ones. It was tedious, annoying and frustrating to know that they had no other choice but strike at ugly heads, at this point.  
However, this time, something was different. Rosenkreuz had apparently run out of fully trained paranormals and had hastily sent a team to France, wrongly assuming that Weiß and Schwarz were still in South America... Well, they were not. And now Paris was once more without Rosenkreuz control.

The hit had probably happened too late to make tomorrow morning’s newspapers. Young, striving politician found dead at charity event. Along with his lackeys, but nobody ever cared about lackeys.

Crawford dreaded the day when fully trained operatives _would_ be ready. The politician and his people were so terribly and ridiculously bad paranormals, it had been almost too easy. Which could only mean that they had been intended as cannon fodder and nothing else. Cannon fodder to buy time for better people to take over.

Taking out Rosenkreuz was the long-term plan, but that one was easier said than done. Crawford knew that his team was extraordinary, if he did say so himself, but that one last Bastille still remained beyond his grasp.

The only thing that kept him from losing it was a hint of a premonition that tickled his senses. One that told him that he had to continue do the small work and wait. Wait for something. Maybe someone.

Yes... their time would come. If there was one thing a precog knew, it was that things came within their own sweet time... but they always came.

His mind returned to his work, and he regarded with satisfaction how yet another central angle of Rosenkreuz’ network went up in flames.  
Easy target or no, it definitely stung the mad old bastards to lose Paris.


	2. Take Out

By the time the team youngsters were back with more equipment that would ease their work but be a right bitch to get on airplanes, Crawford was uncomfortably far from sleepy.  
He clenched and un-clenched his left hand, while the right rubbed his chin and face. The kids had just appeared in the doorway with three boxes between them, when Crawford couldn’t keep a huffed “Shit” from escaping.

The boys looked at each other, and the blonde tilted his head. “Bad time to come back?”

Crawford turned to look at them and the frustrated expression turned slightly smug. He nodded towards the boxes. “Lucky hunting.”

Both boys smiled, the dark haired slightly more reserved. The blonde answered: “Oh, yeah. But then, you already knew that, didn’t you.”

Crawford swivelled in his chair, turning to them fully. “I did. Nice job.”

The younger looked tentatively pleased at the praise. “All access is now possible. Just as requested.”

Crawford smiled at the boy. “I have no doubt that you will make it work, Nagi.”

Nagi now blushed along with being pleased, but he averted his eyes, anyway.

The other boy leaned into him and nudged him with a shoulder, pecking him on the cheek. “So,” he said and faced their commanding officer – well, not exactly officer and not really the only one in charge, but at the moment, he would have to do, “what had you in a jiff, earlier?”

Crawford glanced at the screen and sighed. “Well, I was planning on giving you two a week off in Paris, then something showed up that made about a dozen premonitions hit at once.”

“Doesn’t sound too good,” Nagi said.

His boyfriend just smiled at him. “Oh, come on. If it was that bad, the other three would be awake and buzzing around, swearing at the injustice of being an assassin on the run.” He laughed.

Nagi smiled back. “Farfarello wouldn’t.”

The young men giggled.

Crawford was glad for the little flash of youthfulness, even if he couldn’t allow much of that. “Spain. Something came up in Spain.”

The boys put down their boxes; it sounded like this might take some time. The blonde’s expression darkened a bit.

“Ken and Aya?”

Nagi silently took his hand. “Omi...”

Omi ignored it. “Crawford?”

Crawford sighed. “They’re fine in London. But the regroup will have to wait. We have to take care of Spain, first.”

Omi did not look happy and even the soft hand of his boyfriend in his didn’t lighten the mood, much.

Crawford turned the screen towards the boys. “They reported in, half an hour ago.” Two messages were still alight on the computer. “They’re fine.”

“Yeah, I guess. Doesn’t mean I have to like doing without them for longer than planned.”

Crawford nodded his approval. “You’re a reasonable young man, Tsukiyono. You both are.” He smirked. “Unlike certain other team members that shall remain unnamed.”

Nagi cleared his throat. “Their mission went well, though?” he asked, just to make sure.

“Naturally. And Spain will go well, too.” He waved a hand towards the boys’ boxes. “But I’m going to need you on that equipment, right now. Sorry.” He even did sound vaguely apologetic. “It’s relatively safe to take them out, _now_ , but it won’t remain that way for long. I think they might be...” he hesitated, searching for words to describe what he had sensed in that one premonition, “... forming new alliances. Have to nip that in the bud.”

He kept cool, brown eyes on the screen as the boys went to work. Alliances... it was the only word that came to mind and wouldn’t scare the living daylights out of the other two. And with a telepath on the team, it wouldn’t stay amongst those two, either. This could get messy.

It looked very much like Rosenkreuz was still dead-set on their original plan of gaining immortality through some weird demonic power. And both parties of their eight man team had seen how that had turned out, the first time.   
Summoning powers that were impossible to control and then trying to make demands had turned out to be as stupid as it sounded in theory, and it would have gone tits up even without outside interference sabotaging the project.

Crawford wasn’t sure why, but he knew that they had to take out the trio that had newly arrived in Spain before they could... discover something he’d rather not have get back to Rosenkreuz. Not that he knew what that something was – and taking the insistence of that particular premonition, it was most likely something demonic, so he was happier not knowing – but his instincts were never wrong, and right now, they were screaming Spain.

His mind was working at weaving the premonitions into a plan. A plan that ideally guaranteed three dead Rosenkreuz operatives and no injuries on their part. Road signs and small streets, cities and country sides flickered past his inner eye and confirmed his first suspicion: cannon fodder, again. Cannon fodder that would stumble across something that their superiors apparently expected in Spain but didn’t know for sure.

Crawford blinked and turned towards the boys who were already hooked up to a number of networks, this one looking suspiciously like...   
He cleared his throat. “Your worry got the better of you, Tsukiyono?”

Omi darted his head up, guiltily and shrugged. “I had to test the connectivity, might as well test it with the London CCTV.”

Crawford chuckled. “Are you reassured?”

Omi nodded, smirking. “I am,” he said, which made Nagi giggle, again.

“Good. Now get to work.”

 

*

Omi leaned back in his seat in the car and sighed happily. “This is even better than a week in Paris.”

“Even when all you get is my company instead of your boyfriend?” Youji grinned at the boy.

Omi’s smile turned distinctly dirty, very much unlike his sunny demeanour. “We got to sleep in an actual house, by the sea, with clean sheets...”

“That are no longer clean?”

Omi stuck his tongue out at him. “And now I get a coast side drive in a convertible in your illustrious company.”

“Flattery will get you anywhere, kid.” He just chuckled at said kid rolling his eyes. No matter that he was almost nineteen by now, he would always be the kid he had first met. Killer by night and flower boy going to school by day.   
Sometimes he wondered how it was possible for someone who had started in on this business at such an early age not to go insane.  
He also wondered what kind of a man would train his own child as an assassin at twelve.

Right now, Omi was leaning back in his seat and enjoyed the sun and wind in his face with a smile on his face.  
Youji in return was cheered by the sunny expression. He was almost certain that their whole team would have gone bonkers without their sunshine to provide a backbone. A backbone that was strong enough to have survived six years of being a killer, being there for a team with three other older men, standing tall after taking everything destiny could possibly throw at him and his family.

And that backbone was now turning his head and opened his eyes that sparkled at him, happily. Youji decided not to remind him of the impending mission, not that he thought Omi would have had any problems keeping up his good mood, nonetheless. It was... the boy’s own personal dysfunction.

“So, kid, liking Spain, so far?”

Omi giggled. “Well, considering that I hadn’t even left Japan for most of my life until we teamed up with the devil we knew, I quite enjoy what the world has to offer.”

“Despite psychic psychopaths we have to take out on a regular basis?” The ‘regular basis’ now being almost weekly, at least with the last three missions, what with them being stationed in two countries, at the moment.

Omi laughed. “Yeah... it’s a nice world, despite the odd garbage, every now and then, and that’s what we’re there for, isn’t it?”

Youji just shook his head, smiling. He really didn’t want to think about what was going on in that boy’s head; he never even contemplated asking Schuldig, even though the man would probably have given him an eyeful without hesitation. He was just glad that Omi could live with his life.

When the phone rang in his pocket, and Omi had sufficiently laughed at his ringtone, Youji said: “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pick it up, will you?”

Omi grabbed the phone and held it to his ear. “Yes? We’ll be there in another hour.” With that, he closed the connection and put the phone back in Youji’s pocket. “They checked in.”

Youji nodded. Omi’s eyes were different, now. Crisp and clear, sharp and with a light behind them that was illuminating each and every possible corner of their plan. He had no doubt that Omi had already memorised the whole blueprint of the hotel.  
The sunny exterior was temporarily hidden.

 

It resurfaced on time with their arrival at the hotel, when the two supposed brothers checked in, claiming to visit relatives in Barcelona in two days, as Omi babbled throughout the check-in, truly in character of a boy who very much enjoyed new impressions.  
Both their blonde hair was now a dark brown to suit their Japanese tourist cover.

Once again, Omi’s professional face was back in place, the moment the door of their hotel room closed behind them.  
Without a word, the young man rummaged through his bag and took out a device that he used to scan the rooms. He switched it off after only a few minutes. “No bugs. They were sent here on short notice.”

Youji threw his suitcase on his bed. “Who sets up camp in a hotel as a base, anyway?”

Omi looked out the window. “Someone without a plan. Or someone who has a plan that can only be realised later.”

Youji sat down next to his suitcase. “Either way, acting now was definitely the right choice, then.”

“Did you doubt Crawford?” Omi smiled benignly.

Youji just smirked. “I decided a long time ago that doubting that smug bastard only results in a look that’s even smugger and screams _I told you so_.” He chuckled. “So I’m just going with the flow. Using what’s at our disposal is what we do best.”

{How do you like your room, little brothers?}

Both men froze, but didn’t even flinch at the mental presence, anymore. They had long since got used to telepathy, just like Crawford’s (smug) premonitions and the usefulness of Nagi when you couldn’t find the remote control or didn’t want to get up to open a window.

{Was there something you wanted, Schuldig?} Omi asked, politely.

{Brad and I need to stay out of sight. He thinks we might be recognised by the operatives themselves, despite the masquerade and my helpful interference. That only works on the hotel staff they bugged telepathically, and quite sloppily, too, if I may say so.}

Youji rolled his eyes, as he was reminded once again that Crawford wasn’t the only one who was a smug bastard.

{I heard that!}

Youji smirked. {I should hope so.}

Both Youji and Omi laughed when they received a mental eye-roll.

Schuldig sounded annoyed when he went on. {I _am_ focused, Brad. Shut it. Anyway. We’re staying close to Farf as a dampener, Brad doesn’t think that any of the operatives are good enough to discover us through his aura thingy.}

{So, you two honeys can stay on the down low and my little brother and I will take care of our part.} Youji grinned. It wasn’t like they hadn’t discussed this before, but Crawford insisted to confirm reality as it happened after his premonitions.

Omi showed no outwards sign of amusement, and if Youji would have had to guess, he didn’t think there was anything on the inside, either.  
{Is Farfarello in place?}

{Naturally, squirt.}

At this, Omi rolled his eyes. {At least I’m not Krümel.}

{Of course not. Nagi is Krümel. You’re the squirt.}

Crawford at that point had apparently decided that enough was enough and effortlessly entered the telepathic connection Schuldig had opened between the four men. {I thought I made clear that even mental conversation was to be kept to a minimum? We’re up against paranormals, and no matter how low class they are, they aren’t called paranormals for no reason.}

{Killjoy,} Schuldig protested, but he closed the connection.

Youji and Omi were on their own, again.

Youji slapped both his hands on his thighs. “So, should we unpack?”

“Why bother? We’re leaving again, tomorrow.” Omi briefly rubbed his face. “If everything goes according to plan.”

Youji didn’t add that it would; it always did. More or less. The less didn’t worry him as much as it could have. He stood and looked out the window and on the large pool and hotel guests, enjoying their holiday.  
“I wouldn’t want to switch with their precog.”

Omi shuddered. Only just visible, but there. “I wouldn’t want to switch with any of our targets. But, yeah, it must really suck to be the one left with Farfarello.”

*

Farfarello was sitting in a dark corner of the bathroom, knees tightly pressed to his chest and his arms loped around his legs. His right eye was glinting in the dark, the left covered by his ever present patch. His lip twitched in anticipation.

And he waited. Like a cat, unhurried, aeons of time at his disposal and in his mind.

The moment he heard the front door of the hotel room click open, his one eye moved towards the door and his distorted smile widened. No other reaction was visible, however, and he waited for the second telltale click that was announcing that the door was being locked by someone not in the room. Locked by a certain young hacker.

Farfarello unfolded his body and got up, his knife in his right hand. His movements were fluid and graceful, so unlike the flashing insanity raging behind his eye.

He stepped out of the bathroom, his feet inaudible on the soft, white carpet. His target stood unknowingly in front of the large window overlooking the ocean, Farfarello like a grey cloud surrounding her precognostic abilities. The danger didn’t so much as tickle her senses, the only sign of a threat being the pale face she could make out on the eerie reflection in the window, in the short moment before the first strike of the flashing blade cut her throat, interrupting her screams before they could leave her lips.

 

By the time the door was unlocked from the outside, again, the unmoving figure lying on the floor was mostly unrecognizable, and Farfarello was sitting next to it, apparently memorising the shapes and colours that must have been combined into a masterpiece in the madman’s mind.

Schuldig entered and pulled a disgusted face at the mess he found, averting his eyes.  
{Come on, Farf. Let’s go.}

Farfarello got up from his position on the floor and followed the other man silently to the door. He wiped his knife on his white clothing and stowed it away.

{Shoes,} Schuldig reminded him.

Farfarello took them off and put them in the bag the German held out for him. “Is the coast clear?” Farfarello asked.

“Of course it’s clear, but your stupid Irish luck will only get you so far. We don’t have to leave bloody footprints in the hallway.” Taking off shoes was as far as they went with their cleaning up evidence; everything else would happen afterwards, through computers and telepathic interference.   
Some of it, they didn’t even have to do themselves. Rosenkreuz was not at all interested in having their dead operatives investigated.

A few steps into the hallway, and the door locked, again.

*

“She’s gone.”

“What do you mean, she’s _gone_?”

“I mean that I can’t reach her. Her presence is... gone.”

The second grabbed the first bag he could find and started getting as much of his stuff into it as he could.

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing? Do you think I want to get killed like her?”

The first hesitated, then made a move to get a bag, as well, once he was sure he couldn’t reach their leader.

{Where do you think you’re going?}

The taunting voice that suddenly appeared in both their heads made them drop whatever they had been trying to do, and they ran out of the room.

 

Schuldig sat in his room on the couch snickering.

Crawford followed the progress Nagi was making on the computer. “You just can’t help it, can you?”

Schuldig merely smirked at him. “Loving my job? Nope, can’t help it.” Especially, when he got to take out Rosenkreuz operatives. Their minds had a signature to them that tickled him like spiders in his head. He didn’t know whether that was something their teachers intentionally engineered into their paranormal abilities, or whether it was something his own subconscious made him recognise out of fear.

The operatives they had killed after the fall of Esszett at the museum, where Rosenkreuz had failed spectacularly at their constant quest of finding the key to immortality, were easy targets, but the familiar and constraining darkness surrounded even the most low-level agents. It made it easier to spot them, but Schuldig, Nagi and even Crawford had to overcome the ingrained reflex of wanting to get away, as fast as possible. Farfarello... well, he was a different matter entirely.  
Now, Rosenkreuz’ splinter group Esszett had had _really_ dangerous people in it. But they were all dead and gone, leaving a huge gap in the field that at the moment couldn’t be filled.

The dark and painful history left Schuldig in a situation where he took an even more gleeful joy in erasing the constricting feedback he got from their current targets.

He contacted Omi and Youji. {They’re heading your way.} They were indeed heading the right way. Not even the telepath of the two targets noticed that the path through the corridors they ran along and that lead them towards the laundry room was being carefully weaved into their thoughts by Schuldig.

Schuldig’s expression relaxed with each breath he took, and with each last breath the targets lost. He sat, leaning back and smiled almost serenely.  
After some moments, his eyes flickered to Nagi. “Ready to go raid a hotel room?”

 

The enemy agents had been taken out.


	3. Demons

“Schuldig.” Crawford sighed. “I can guarantee you that there is nothing in their underwear drawer that needs recovering.”

Schuldig dangled a pink string tanga from one finger. “I beg to differ. This would suit you.”

Youji groaned and continued to raid the closet. “I did not need that mental image!”

“Be grateful that I didn’t actually give you a mental image. I have quite the vivid imagination.” Schuldig snickered.

“I am well aware of that, thanks,” Youji answered more out of habit, since he had discovered something on a shelf.  
“Yo, Crawford. Look at this.”

Crawford blinked at the small device lying in the cardboard box Youji held out to him.

Youji shook his head. “Who the hell keeps fancy equipment in a shoe box?”

The longer Crawford looked at it, the more time shifted behind his eyes. He had seen this device in a premonition; he saw another premonition, now; past, present and future began to merge.  
In the present, his hand reached into the box and took it out, and he immediately got tactile visions, as well.

“What is it?” Omi asked, looking at it curiously.

Crawford wasn’t surprised that not even the two hackers knew what this was. He had seen the now dead precog how she would have used this, only days later, to find something in a cave. It was the very reason he wanted her taken out, before that could happen.  
He briefly considered retrieving the item, himself, and he knew that he could have... but his gut told him to keep away.  
“It’s a scanner,” he said, finally.

Nagi paled, slightly. “It looks almost like... that device. The one they used to diagnose and alter Fujimiya’s sister...” His voice was quiet, well aware that Omi and Youji could react badly to reminders of the time when they were enemies.

Omi took his hand and caressed his fingers in silent support.

Crawford nodded. “It is. Though this one scans for something else. I’m just not sure what.”

“Now, wait just a minute!” Schuldig broke the silence with a shout.

His sudden outburst surprised all but Crawford, and though the fear in the telepath’s eyes was not exactly surprising, given the circumstances, it was shocking to see, nonetheless.

Schuldig hid it well and fast, though, letting only anger show. “You can’t tell me that they’re still after the whole immortality through demonic power shit! There are no demons!” he declared, firmly. “Trust me, I would know if there were.”

Crawford considered for a while what to tell them. At one point, he wouldn’t be able to hide that information, anymore, but he was not at all certain whether the current moment would be the right one to reveal it.  
Then there was the one puzzle piece he knew was still missing, but didn’t know what it was.

“Schuldig...” he began, “people have called _you_ a demon. Assuming that you aren’t one, of which I am not entirely convinced, does that mean that you don’t exist? Or does it merely mean that you aren’t what they think you are?”

Schuldig blinked. He didn’t like what he heard one bit. Even thinking about that there might be something else that Rosenkreuz could use against them, made his stomach churn. He would rather have died a messy death than end up in their hands, again.

Omi was the one to speak. “You mean, there is something, something that isn’t a demon, but they think it is?” His eyes flickered to the device in Crawford’s hands, a very disquieting answer forming in his mind.

Crawford knew when all four men had come to the same conclusion; it was clearly visible in their expressions. “Does this look like a demon made it?”

“Jesus fucking... _FUCK_!” Schuldig stormed out of the room, not looking back.

Crawford sighed. “You keep going, here. I guess I don’t have to tell you that it is vital to get everything that might contain information.” He left, following Schuldig.

 

The remaining three in the room stood quiet for a long, tense moment.

Youji broke it. “Just... making sure.” He looked like he finally reached the point where he thought that paranormal assassins were peanuts, while not liking what the big nuts had turned out to be. Or maybe he just couldn’t believe what he was about to say. “We are talking about aliens, here, right?”

The kids just stared at him, neither daring to say the word.

Youji gave a hysterical laugh. “Sure. Aliens. What else? Why am I even surprised, anymore?” He shook his head, making himself ignore that the rug he had only just managed to clean up and settle down on was being pulled out from under him. Again.

He found a small laptop in the same closet he had searched, before, which got the other two in gear, again, too.

This was not the time for breaking down.  
They could always do that, later. Or so Youji promised himself.

 

Crawford found Schuldig on the balcony of their room, as he knew he would.

Schuldig had both hands on the railing and his head bowed. He had heard the man come through the door, and Crawford even let him read his presence a little. Schuldig waited until the other man put his hands on both his shoulders from behind.  
“Shit, Brad. Aliens?”

Crawford pressed a kiss on the flaming, red hair. “I guess it was rather naïve of me to think that the equipment we’ve seen at the institute was all their own doing.”

Schuldig turned around to be held properly. “You didn’t know?”

Crawford smiled at the slight accusation in that tone. Accusation and a plea to not disappoint. “I had the suspicion, before, same as you...”

“But...”

“But you thought the mere idea was ridiculous.” He nodded. “As did I. The visions only cleared up that image, very recently.”

“How recent?” Schuldig asked, suspiciously.

“Before we came to Spain.”

That brought Schuldig’s mind to a sudden halt. He bit his lip and averted his eyes.

Crawford blinked. “What?”

“There was something... the night before we left.”

Crawford cupped one of Schuldig’s cheeks and made him look at him, again. “Yes?”

“I thought it was a dream. I don’t think it was... that,” he added quickly. “Alien or something. But it was a presence.”

Crawford searched the green eyes in front of his. This was important, he just knew it. “What presence?”

“I don’t know!” Schuldig huffed, frustrated. “I think I felt it, before, years ago. Now it just... popped back.”

“Where?”

“No idea.”

Crawford gave him a no nonsense look.

“I don’t! It’s not a threat; it’s just there. And it wasn’t there before. But I think it’s... human.” He pulled a face at the last word. This was just what he needed. Fucking E.T.

The reaction made Crawford smile benignly.

Schuldig rolled his eyes. “Laugh at me, why don’t you.” But his lip twitched. Crawford was about to lean in for a kiss, but Schuldig turned his face.  
“Brad. Just how fucked are we?”

Crawford contemplated the question for a moment. “No more than we ever were.”

“But you just said that you didn’t know...”

“Just because I didn’t _know_ , doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. You’ve seen the technology at the institute. It’s always been there, as long as we have. And the so-called demons... well, they just weren’t demons, but they were in... contact. For lack of a better word.”

“Oh, _God_!” Schuldig threw his head back. “Contact. You make it sound like...”

Crawford chuckled. “Like what it is, I’m afraid.”

Schuldig grinned back, then suddenly dashed forward, framing the other man’s face in both hands and kissed him, deeply. When he broke the kiss, he gasped. “Tell me we can do this.”

Crawford delved into the dirty little mouth with his tongue, again. “I told you before. Follow me, and we can do everything.” He stared into the cold, bright eyes, holding them with his own, his voice demanding. Demanding the universe to obey him.

And Schuldig believed that voice and those eyes. He knew, deep down, the universe wouldn’t be able to resist, either.  
He wanted more of a reassurance, right now, however.

Schuldig pulled his lover back into the room to get it.

 

*

“It’s such a beautiful house...” Youji sighed the smoke of his cigarette into the dark night from the veranda overlooking the sea. He turned his head to look inside, where their two teenagers were huddled together in the blueish light of several computer screens, working over the small, hand-held, and not to forget _alien_ device.  
“And those two work it all away.”

Schuldig next to him chuckled and flicked his own cigarette over the little stone wall. “Somebody has to do some work around here.”

“It’s not us.”

“Nope. Wouldn’t know where to begin with figuring out that little salt shaker, anyway.”

Youji laughed. “Oh, you geek!”

“Yeah, well, you know what I’m talking about. So what does that make you?” Schuldig grinned right back.

“The geek who follows it?”

That made Schuldig laugh out loud. “Nasty! Star Wars as a follow up to Star Trek. Really, Kudou?”

 

The two men outside kept on with their friendly banter and Crawford left his spot in the shadows, right inside the door, leaving them to it. They needed their own way of dealing with the newest revelation.  
Crawford quickly checked a premonition about what the reaction of the two men still in London would be like, but it didn’t worry him much.

Fujimiya would refuse to acknowledge any kind of change in the plan, which basically was the truth, but only he could actually force himself to believe it. Hidaka would be shocked for sure, but then just go on. For him, aliens wouldn’t be any different or worse than psychics.

No, Crawford’s real worry was for Schuldig. Despite the cocky exterior, the German’s past had left a number of dangerous and hurtful triggers. He wasn’t entirely sure what this new type of information would do to him. Schuldig had coped well enough the night before with passion, and he was coping well enough now with humour. It was entirely possible that he would be able to continue with those mechanisms, but it was just as possible that he might not.

One last look at his lover laughing outside and a small regret that while he might have got premonitions, he couldn’t choose them, Crawford went to check on the boys.

 

“Any luck?” he asked Nagi who rubbed his face, while Omi tried something what appeared to be a button on the device.  
“Should you be pushing random buttons, Tsukiyono?”

Omi grinned at him. “You should know me better. It’s not random, I’m only opening a feedback.” Omi’s eyes flickered from the device to one computer screen to the second and back, then he smiled.  
“It’s a scanner, alright.”

Crawford walked around the boys to look at the screen over their shoulders. “What does it scan for?”

“Err...” Omi stared at the nonsensical numbers and graphics.

“Waves,” Nagi’s quiet voice provided. “We don’t know what kind. Some sort of energy waves.”

Crawford nodded. “Makes sense. Theoretically, everything sends out an energy wave. It might be a universal scanner, though my guess would be that it is programmed for something specific.”

Both teenagers nodded. Nagi added: “The data seems to go in one certain direction, yes. But it doesn’t scan for anything I recognise, so I guess it would have to be something alien.”

Crawford straightened. “Would you say it scans for something biological?”

Nagi and Omi shared a quick, uncomfortable look. “It looks like something in between biological and inorganic,” Omi said. “No idea what exactly that means.”

Crawford looked at the scanner, seeing an image form before his mental eye. A hand holding the device, knowing that the man belonging to the hand was an ally. It was not a hand he knew, however.  
He blinked. “We won’t be needing it, just now. Something is missing.”

The boys looked at each other and back at him.

“So we wait?” Omi wanted to know. “Just nothing?”

Crawford took the device and now knew... “It’s of no danger to us. And of no use, just now. But we need to keep it.”

“So what _do_ we do?” Nagi asked.

Crawford turned to look at Youji and Schuldig who came back inside, having just heard the last question. Crawford nodded at all of them. “Pack your bags. We’re going back to London, tomorrow.”

Omi’s beaming smile made Nagi answer it, and Youji’s relief was just as visible.

“About time,” the tall blonde said, smirking.

 

*

Ken stepped out of the elevator, both arms full of grocery bags. “Hey, Aya. I’m back.”

“I can see that,” came the bland answer, but the man’s lip twitched.

Ken grinned. There had been a time when that answer would have come dead-serious and possibly angry, because his announcement of being back would have been considered an unnecessary stating of the obvious.  
He stowed away the food, watching Aya who was working away on a laptop out of the corner of his eye.  
He slammed the door of the fridge and leaned against it. It was quite nice, their apartment slash base thing. But he would never ever get used to the whole no more windows; they had been much more out in the open back in Japan. Yeah, right, so an underground base was safer, of course. Especially safer than what had served as their base in Tokyo… A self-depreciating grin formed on his lips.  
Here, nobody could shoot anyone through a window, nobody could get past the Omi and Nagi safe security, even if somebody were to manage to kidnap either or both of them and read their minds (which in their current situation actually was something they had to consider).

“Kind of unfair,” he finally said. “The others getting to enjoy France and Spain while we have to stay in rainy old London.” He smiled, crookedly.

“Sunny weather always makes for cheerful assassinations,” Aya stated dryly.

Ken laughed. “Hopefully, Nagi managed to catch some sun. Horribly pale and scrawny little thing.”

Aya’s amethyst eyes flickered up to him. “Don’t let Omi hear that.”

“Why?” Ken plopped onto the couch facing the chair Aya was sitting in. “The pale and scrawny types are just the thing for him, apparently.”

Aya shook his head, smiling and went back to work. “They are kind of cute together.”

Ken chuckled. “If you take away the lethal and cold-blooded killer thing, yeah. Sure.”  
But Aya was right, they were cute together, and while certainly not everyone would agree, Ken felt like they deserved some happiness and normalcy in their lives. Omi had been recruited at the age twelve, and Nagi must have been around six or seven when Rosenkreuz picked him up. And Ken knew that Rosenkreuz probably did a whole lot more to that little boy than train him to use his telekinesis to assassinate people.  
At moments like these, Ken was glad he didn’t know the whole story, and every smile on the young man’s face was to be treasured. Well, _now_ , it was. Back in the days when they were enemies, that freaky little kid scared the shit out of him.

Ken sighed, loudly and stood up, again. “Going to check on our guest.”

Aya merely nodded and continued typing. “They’ll be here in about another four to five hours.”

Ken nodded, as well, picked up some food and left the room.

He had to go down another floor and hesitated in front of the cell holding their prisoner, like he had from the moment they had put him in there, the day before yesterday. The person inside was a clear reminder of why Rosenkreuz had to be taken out.

He unlocked the door and entered, forcing a smile on his face.

The figure inside the cell was huddled in a corner, the food and water still untouched from when he last brought him something.

Ken sighed. “Look, starving yourself won’t help. Our telepath will be here in another few hours, you won’t die until then.”

The boy lifted his head and merely stared back.

Ken figured he could be no older than maybe fourteen or fifteen. A promising precog with not enough training... more cannon fodder. Except that he and Aya hadn’t killed this one, more by chance than anything else.

The boy sat there, no light or hope or emotional response in his blue eyes.

Ken sat in front of him. According to Crawford, the boy was of no danger to him, especially when he hadn’t eaten in almost two days. (Though Ken was also pretty certain that Crawford probably didn’t have in mind that he just sit in there and chat with their prisoner... but who knew.)  
He put down the tray. “Won’t you at least drink some water?”

The boy eyed the glass with something akin to longing, but didn’t give in.

“See... you don’t have that much information for us to use, anyway. You’re not exactly a high-up or anything. And what little information you do have, we will get before long. I’m sure you are aware of Schuldig’s abilities, aren’t you?”

Hardly a reaction, but the boy bit his lip. He obviously had heard of the German.

“Come on. What’s your name? Just your first name? Won’t be able to make anything of that, will I?” Ken smile encouragingly.

The boy stared back for a long time, chapped lips opening and closing ever so slightly... until he croaked, “Griffin.”

Ken continued smiling, hiding just how pleased he was. It didn’t even matter whether it was truly the boy’s name or not; it signalled some intention to communicate, which was what mattered to Ken.

“Hello, Griffin. I’m Ken.” He pushed the glass of water closer to the boy. “Go on. You won’t be any good to anyone if you die of thirst.”

Griffin lowered his eyes. “I got caught. I am no good to anyone. They will kill me, anyway.”

“Griffin,” Ken said, waiting for the boy to look up, again. This time, Ken’s warm, brown eyes were freezing cold. “Make no mistake, we will kill whoever made you think that you are not worth anything. Do you want to know why?”

Griffin didn’t move, but he didn’t look away, either.

“Because they’re wrong.”

For a long time, neither did anything. But then, so slowly it was hardly noticeable, Griffin’s hand moved. It shook, terribly, but it moved and finally picked up the glass.

Ken smiled.

 

*

Schuldig closed the sound-proof cell door behind him and faced Crawford and Ken, who had been waiting outside.

“You were right,” he said to Crawford. “He doesn’t know anything. But for some reason, he seems to trust Hidaka.” His eyes flickered to Ken. “As far as his washed brain lets him. I still think it would be kinder to just shoot him.”

“He’s just a boy!” Ken protested.

Schuldig tilted his head. “And you should know better than to underestimate someone who is _just a boy_.”

“We’re not killing him,” Crawford said, matter-of-factly, and that was that.

Ken stared from one man to the other and stalked off, angry at the fact that this seemed like just another business transaction and he _knew_ that, angry at Schuldig for saying the truth, angry at himself for getting close, angry at their situation on the whole; and most of all, he was murderously pissed off at Rosenkreuz. Rotten bastard that they were.  
Thankfully, the murderous aspect of his anger would sooner or later come in handy against their enemies.

 

Crawford kept a watchful eye on his lover who squinted at the cell door. “Was there something else?”

Schuldig shrugged it off. “The usual. He was abused in every which way possible, both before he was found and during his training.”

Crawford nodded. Paranormals often came from an extreme environment, very often consisting of violent and sexual abuse. In conclusion, the Rosenkreuz institute was mostly made out of such elements, having been subjected to abuse as well as having applied it.  
It was as sickening a thought as it ever had been, and he was glad that the four former members of Weiß had only been allowed a glimpse or two at Schwarz’ pasts; though none of them were stupid and had figured out some aspects on their own.

Crawford had expected such past in their prisoner, as had Schuldig. But the German still sometimes reacted more strongly to some victims than others, depending on what exactly he saw in their minds.  
Schuldig might have been in need of some more _reassurance_. Not that Crawford minded.  
It seemed like there was something else, however. Something unrelated to the boy.

“And?” he asked.

Schuldig fidgeted uncomfortably. “That presence?”

Crawford nodded, calmly and reassuringly. He had known that there would be more, he just remained uncertain about the when, what and why.

“I think we’re closer now than we were in Spain.” Schuldig looked nervous, as if he expected something to appear out of thin air. He was a strong man, a strong man who was learning to deal with some personal demons who just happened to turn out to be aliens. But he would deal, beat and win. Losing was not an option.

“Okay,” Crawford acknowledged. “Let me know if something changes, but don’t try to force anything. It will come in time.”

Schuldig rolled his eyes. It was at times like these that he absolutely hated Crawford and his infuriating gift. Schuldig was more the _jump now and look where you land later_ kind of guy, not the _there might be something coming and now you wait_ kind of guy.

And he hated that Crawford always had to be right. Smug asshole. If only he didn’t love him as much as he did. That was almost as scary as aliens…


	4. The Name

Schuldig jerked awake, sat up straight and breathed harshly.

It didn’t take a second for Crawford to open his eyes, too and look at his lover’s back. “You okay?” he mumbled, not fully awake, yet. He suspected a flashback of some sort, manifesting itself in dreams.

However, that was not what had happened, this time. Schuldig ignored Crawford and stared into the darkness. “Who the fuck are you?”

Crawford frowned and sat up. “What are you talking about?”

“The presence is a man,” Schuldig stated matter-of-factly. “It’s a man, and he’s driving me up the walls with his slippery mind. If he even has a mind.”

Crawford blinked. That was an odd statement, even from Schuldig, who did make very odd statements, every now and then; especially about other people’s minds.  
“Are you sure it’s not alien?” he finally asked.

Schuldig’s eyes flickered back and forth. “Oh, he’s no alien. Not sure he’s entirely human, either, though.”

“Can you trace him?”

Schuldig kept staring into thin air. “No.” His eyes hardened. “There’s something wrong.”

Crawford didn’t really know what to make of this. “Then what makes you say he’s human?”

Schuldig turned around and huffed. “I said he wasn’t an alien. I also said that he wasn’t entirely human.”

Crawford pushed himself up against the headboard and rubbed his face. “Schuldig...”

“Look, I don’t know, alright?” he said, now clearly agitated.

“What makes him out, then?” Crawford tried, patiently. If Schuldig was convinced that whoever it was _wasn’t_ an alien, he must have had an inkling of what it _was_. Schuldig was an exceptional telepath, him not being able to identify and track down a person without breaking into sweat usually meant that they had a highly trained Rosenkreuz operative at their hands, but since Schuldig did pick up something, that couldn’t be it.

Schuldig’s eyes lost focus, again. “It’s human, just too much of it.” He let himself fall back down. “And I don’t think I want to know more.”

Crawford looked at him. “Just tell me when you get something from him.”

Schuldig stared back with a _what the hell do you want from me_ expression. “I just did.” He crossed his arms, looking up from where he was lying at the still sitting man. “If you keep pissing me off, you might as well find yourself another telepath, mister.”

Crawford waved him off. “Naw. I’m picky, and you’re the best there is.”

Schuldig smirked.

“And you’re good in bed.”

Schuldig chuckled. “Fuck you.”

“Do you want to?” came the prompt response with a raised eyebrow.

“I approve of your preferred method of treating what you seem to think is some sort of flaw that needs treatment. And I think...”

Schuldig also approved of Brad’s preferred method of shutting him up and melted into the kiss.

Wandering hands were just starting to become bolder, when a knock on the door interrupted them.

Crawford broke the kiss and rolled off his lover, rubbing his face. He had seen the knock coming about half a minute before it did, and he knew that he couldn’t avoid that conversation.  
“Come in,” he barked and sat. Schuldig just pouted where he was.

Nagi opened the door and peeked inside. Crawford wasn’t sure exactly what the young man had heard through the door, but taking in his expression, they had not been quiet enough.

“Something’s come up,” the teenager declared, carefully.

Crawford nodded. “Go on.” He had an idea what it was about. There was a reason they had set up camp in England, after all.

“A politician has turned up. We found his data online. It’s suspicious.”

“Suspicious enough to know that he’s Rosenkreuz?”

“Oh, yes,” Nagi confirmed without hesitation. “No doubt.”

Crawford nodded, mostly to himself. He Rosenkreuz had abandoned the plan to infiltrate the Japanese government with their own politician when the ritual at the museum had failed. It had been only a matter of time before they would try the same in a different country, and Crawford had heard several alarm bells in his head when he thought of England.

“Alright,” he finally said. “I’m going to have to keep you two awake for a while longer, then. You can have tomorrow off.” He waited for a confirming nod from Nagi, not that he expected the boy to defy him.  
“Drain their money. Make it obvious so that they know we’re on their trail, but don’t let them retrace you.”

Now Schuldig sat up. “You’re not going to let them go on for a while to see what they’re planning?” he asked, genuinely surprised. Crawford usually liked to lure out his prey.

Crawford shook his head. “Not this time. I already know what they’re after. And I can’t let them get there too soon.”

Schuldig swallowed. That did not sound good. “Another... contact?”

“To say the least.”

Nagi paled a little more, which made him look freakishly young, even younger than he always looked. But if anything, he was a professional. “Is there anything else you want us to do to delay them?”

Crawford pondered the question for a moment. “We... might need the location of the Rosenkreuz base, soon. Get on that, if you can find a lead.”

Nagi nodded, curtly and left the room.

 

For a long moment, the two men on the bed remained unmoving. Suddenly, Schuldig got up.

“Well. That killed the mood.”

He left the room without another word.

*

Youji climbed up the stairs from their gym, freshly showered and heard Crawford and Schuldig still argue, as they had, all day, before.

He sighed, deeply and pushed open the door.

Nagi was no longer sitting on the little couch with his computer. Omi had probably dragged the young man out of the room. Nagi was very sensitive to fights in his makeshift family, especially when it was Schuldig and Crawford fighting. They were a bit like his parents, had taken care of him, had loved him to the best of their abilities (which admittedly wasn’t that much, when it came to slippery concepts like love), they had been there for him – through his training and his new life as an assassin.

“What do you wanna do?” Schuldig asked, probably not for the first time that day. “Just walk into their base? Ask them nicely if you get to blow it up and kill everyone in it?”

Crawford rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I have been very patient with you, Schuldig. I have told you, numerous times, that I do not know yet what we’re going to do, and that you should trust my judgement. But it appears that fear has clouded yours.”

Youji flinched. Oh, that was a low blow.

Schuldig appeared to be of the same opinion and stormed out, past Youji and downstairs.

Youji sent Crawford a cold look that was answered with one of petulance – which was kind of silly to see on Crawford – then Youji followed Schuldig.

 

He found the volatile redhead in the gym he had been in only moments before, and he was already kicking and punching the living daylights out of a punching bag.

Youji left him to it for a few minutes, assessing the situation correctly that it would have been a very, very stupid thing to do to interrupt the man just now.

After a small eternity, Schuldig’s blows became slower, and he finally just held the bag with both arms, leaned his head against it and all but sobbed out his frustration.

Youji stepped up to him, grabbed him firmly, twisted him around and held him as tightly and closely as he could.

Schuldig was so out of it, both emotionally and physically that all he did was cling back and sob his rage into Youji’s shoulder instead.  
The crying subsided, but the tight hold remained the same.

Youji had waited for some of the tension to leave the man, before he said, quietly: “He loves you, you know.”

“He has a funny way of showing it,” Schuldig rasped.

Youji had expected that answer, and he didn’t even have to be a mind-reader. “He has to keep us all alive, including you.”

Schuldig pushed himself out of Youji’s embrace. “We’re up against fucking aliens, Kudou! Creatures that have the technology to travel through space! And Brad wants us to walk into the Rosenkreuz base, just like that?”

“Of course not,” Youji tried to remain calm. The last thing he wanted was Schuldig to walk out on him, too. Not right now. “First, the aliens have been in contact with Rosenkreuz all along, and you guys have defied them just fine, so far.”

Schuldig stopped pacing and stood there, one hand on his hip, the other rubbing his eyes.

“And second,” Youji continued, “Crawford doesn’t want us to just walk in there. We all knew that sooner or later it would come to that, and once we have the game pieces set up, this is what we’ll do.”

Schuldig crossed his arms. “It’s getting closer fast; I can feel it.”

Youji nodded. Schuldig was not the precog, but from the sudden quickening of the pace of things around them, Youji was inclined to agree.

Schuldig turned his head and looked Youji straight in the eyes. “I’m not letting them get me alive. This might as well be the end,” he said calmly.

“He’s not giving up,” Youji declared, not even having to say who he was talking about. “He’s most definitely not letting you die.”

Schuldig bit his lips. He knew that. He really did... but...

“Hey,” Youji added, trying to cheer things up a bit, “we’ve been at our rope’s end, before. That’s where we start from.”

Instead of being cheered as planned by that, Schuldig froze. The insecurity, anger and frustration slipped off him like his coat when he came in from the rain, the professional air (that he did indeed have, hidden somewhere under his attitude) firmly taking their place.  
He turned and walked out of the gym, leaving a dazed looking Youji blinking for a few seconds, before the man followed him, shrugging.

 

Schuldig entered the living room slash briefing room slash research room, purposefully. By now, the kids were there, again, showing some result or other on their computer to Crawford.

Schuldig made sure to make an entrance, posed in the middle of the room and put his hand on his hip, again. He wasn’t entirely sure why this was so important, but he did know that it was. And it would get them closer to... something.  
“Yo, Brad. The name Torchwood ring any bells?”

From the way Crawford remained unmoving, hunched over the laptop before he stood up, spoke volumes.  
“What about them?”

Schuldig smirked, just as Youji entered the room behind him. “That presence I’ve been feeling? That’s where he is. I think he even believes himself to _be_ Torchwood.” He added that last part with a confused frown.

Crawford’s eyes moved behind his glasses, as if they were following another vision as it happened. “What’s his name?”

Schuldig tilted his head. Crawford just _had_ to find flaw in whatever he presented to him, didn’t he? “Not sure,” he said, curtly. “I’m not even entirely sure _he_ knows that, anymore.”

Against Schuldig’s expectations, Crawford seemed enormously pleased with that answer. He smirked, widely and rushed to another set of connected computers with four screens. He started a scanning software and let it run over a place called...

“What’s in Cardiff?” Aya, who had stepped into the room unnoticed, asked coolly.

Crawford didn’t turn around. “Where’s Hidaka?”

“Taking care of Farfarello and then our guest. What’s in Cardiff?”

“Torchwood,” Crawford answered and narrowed down his search over a specific spot.

The kids stepped closer to get a better look. “There’s nothing there,” Omi noticed, blinking at the screen.

Crawford ignored them and directed his scanner deeper, indeed finding several cell phone signals underground. “Oh, but there is,” he said and made a random connection to one of the numbers flashing on his screen.

He put the call on the speaker, and they could all hear the dialling tone.

A woman answered. “Williams.”

“Good evening, Miss Williams. Captain Harkness, please.” Crawford apparently didn’t think he had to introduce himself.

There was a brief pause on the other end. “I don’t know a Captain Harkness.”

Crawford’s smirk widened. Oh, how he loved playing with people. “Miss Williams, not only do you know Captain Harkness, he is currently with you inside the Torchwood base.” When Williams didn’t answer immediately, he added, “I am quite impressed that you managed to rebuild it, by the way.”  
His eyes flickered to the screen that now showed the information about the woman he was on the phone with.

“Look, whoever you are, you have the wrong number, so...”

“Gwen. May I call you Gwen? I’m sure Captain Harkness listens to this conversation, right now, and I believe he might be interested that Brad Crawford wants to speak to him.”

It only took a moment for a man to answer the phone, after that announcement.

“Tell me, Brad Crawford, what the hell does Schwarz want from me, and why do you think I’d be interested in anything you have to say?”

Crawford chuckled. “Well, you’re on the phone, so you’re going to have to answer the second question, yourself, Captain.”

“Don’t even try to give me the arrogance; I have millennia on you,” Harkness didn’t seem particularly impressed, but Crawford knew better. The dear Captain most certainly _was_ impressed.  
“You called me, which means you want something. I just don’t see why I should even consider saving your asses.”

Schuldig, who easily got infected by Crawford’s arrogance (which was why the twosome terror could be incredibly annoying when they worked each other into a state), yelled from behind Crawford’s shoulder: “Because they’re cute asses!”

Crawford sighed. He was secretly amused, but wasn’t going to let Harkness know that just now. Familiarity offered weakness. Always.  
“You will have to excuse my team telepath,” he said, knowing well that Harkness would know who he was talking about and would be suitingly impressed, once more. “He is of the opinion that a thought thought might as well be a thought spoken.”

But, much like Crawford, Harkness was not going to show any kind of reaction. “Your answer, Crawford.”

“Because we’re going to take out Rosenkreuz for you.”

The line went very quiet for a long moment after that. “While I agree that taking them out would be a good thing, what does that have to do with me?”

Crawford got so many premonitions of that phone call, all bombarding his head at once that he was having a hard time navigating around the obstacles. And there were a lot of obstacles; he was treading dangerous grounds with the Captain.  
Finally, he said: “There is an established contact between Rosenkreuz and an alien race that I do not know the name of, unfortunately.”

“How convenient.”

“However,” Crawford ignored the comment, “there was supposed to be some sort of exchange, four years ago. Seeing as that was the time you disappeared, I am going to assume you know something about it.”

Crawford heard a gasp in the background that sounded much more like Williams than Harkness and went on: “Something went wrong, then. I guess we have you to thank for that.”

“No. Everybody else.”

Crawford blinked. What an odd answer. “Be that as it may, there might be another contact in the making. We would very much like to take them out before that happens. Wouldn’t that be in your best interest?”

There was another long pause. “Look. I don’t deal with assassins, much less psychic assassins, recruited and trained by the very organisation they’re now apparently trying to take out. Your motives aren’t exactly pure.”

“Our motives are none of your concern.”

“On the contrary!” Harkness didn’t even let Crawford finish his sentence, before he yelled at him. “If and when said contact occurs, we will deal with it on _our_ terms. Ours. Not yours. And most certainly not on Rosenkreuz ground.”

Crawford considered what he had heard so far for a moment. Harkness was tricky to deal with. He was both emotional and aged beyond reason. “As long as Rosenkreuz is around, your alien friends will have someone to contact.”

“They will find someone else to contact!”

“Ah, but someone with as much potential? They chose their negotiation partners for a reason.”

There was a sniffing or huffing sound, and Harkness cleared his throat. “So let’s say I do consider working with you, which so far I don’t, what do you need me for? You know them better than anyone else.”

And now for the _really_ tricky part. “Their goal is to gain immortality. They have already tried to access that through the aliens; they will take any other opportunity presented to them…” He left the sentence sounding almost like a question.

Harkness laughed a harsh laugh. “You need me as bait,” he stated and laughed, again. “Sorry, Crawford. I definitely don’t trust you enough for that.”

Crawford typed some information into one of his terminals and in mere seconds found another to match. “Is the computer I just locked onto secure?”

There was frantic typing on the other end to be heard, followed by an annoyed sigh. “If you can access it, it apparently isn’t!” Harkness swore under his breath.

Crawford chuckled. “Secure enough.” He pushed another button and sent the file. “This person is currently in their possession,” he said as an explanation to the information Harkness and Williams must have had in front of them, right now.  
“Alive, I might add.”

The hoarse “Oh, God,” was all he got to hear for a long time.

The name on the screen didn’t mean anything to any of the men on his end of the line, in this very room, and Crawford knew that. It hardly meant anything to him; he only knew his purpose, he knew nothing of the person behind it.

Now he knew what had been missing. Harkness, certainly, but so was...

 

 _Jones, Ianto_.


	5. Connections

Jack was sure that the world had stopped turning for a moment. He couldn’t stop staring at the screen.

 _Jones, Ianto  
DOB: August 19, 1983  
Stat: successful connection  
AL: parameter 12  
PS: operational_

The small sound Gwen made next to him, jerked him awake. “And you expect me to just believe that this is anything but a trap?” he forced out.

“Captain... how informed are you about the work we did for Rosenkreuz in Japan?”

Jack rubbed his wet eyes and swallowed, willing his thoughts to remain focused. “I know about the politician and that you were supposedly stopped by another team of assassins.”

“Weiß?”

“That’s the one.” Jack nodded, unseen by Crawford. “I also did a little research on that team. Their employer is almost as fucked up as yours, but at least they were on the right side.”

“Our _former_ employers are power hungry lunatics with a small army of psychics at their disposal. Fortunately for both you and us, their newest generation isn’t fully trained, yet.”

“You claim that they’re no longer your employers. I’m having a hard time believing that.” If only half the stuff he had heard about them was true, nobody in their right mind would leave them, much less live to tell the tale.

“Weiß work with us, now.”

Oh. That was... unexpected. He glanced at Gwen who unsurprisingly had no idea what direction this conversation had taken, but she didn’t seem too pleased about the psychic part.  
“Are they with you, right now?” Jack demanded to know.

“All but one who is tending to a prisoner.”

Jack didn’t remember all the names, but one of them had been firmly stuck in his memory. “I want to talk to Tsukiyono.”

There was the sound of a moving chair and then a timid but curious voice answering. “I am Tsukiyono Omi.”

“I’ll make this brief. Why do you work for them?”

“We work with them, not for them,” was the petulant answer.

Jack almost rolled his eyes. “You can’t tell me that you don’t follow the precog’s lead.”

“Of course we do. It would be stupid not to use all possible assets. But we all have a say in the missions we take, and we all have to agree on the direction we’re heading in. The direction is very clear. We _will_ take Rosenkreuz out, either with or without you.”

The young man sounded every bit the professional assassin that he was, and knowing about him what Jack knew, that was a very disturbing thought.   
“And you want to take them out because... they’re evil? Because they harm others, and you’re the vigilantes?” Jack snorted.

“Because they harm their own and will stop at nothing to harm others.”

Jack bit his lip. He didn’t have a lot of information about Rosenkreuz, but from what he did know, more than just bodies marked their way.

Tsukiyono continued without waiting for an answer. “I am not privy to the information that you are, Captain. But four years ago, Rosenkreuz was aiming to perform a ritual with what they thought was a demonic power. I know nothing about what they offered in exchange, but knowing them, it could have been anything. And they would have delivered it, no questions asked.”

With every minute that passed, Jack remembered painfully why he had avoided this godforsaken planet for four years. “You made your point.”

The soft voice answered: “I was not aware that I was making a point.”

Jack wasn’t sure whether the young man was lying or not, but if he wasn’t… “You’re quite perceptive,” Jack allowed. He paused, thinking about what to say next. After only a moment he realised that there was only one thing to do.  
“Get me Crawford, again.”

Gwen seemed to realise from his expression what he had in mind and shook her head, violently. “Jack!” she hissed and then mouthed ‘No!’

“Crawford,” the other man answered the phone, again.

Jack’s eyes wouldn’t stay off the screen for more than a few seconds at a time. “I’m going to need some more information on the data you sent.”

“Certainly.”

This time, Jack did roll his eyes. Smug bastard.

Crawford continued. “From what I gather, his status has been connected ever since he was brought to the institute. He serves as a telepathic amplifier.”

“Amplifying what?” Jack had troubles breathing. The thought alone of Ianto being connected to some alien machine made his stomach churn.

“Amplifying telepathic waves from other Rosenkreuz telepaths. Schuldig here was still connected to him for a short while, until we... parted ways with them.”

Jack couldn’t hold back a whimper and hardly felt the calming hand on his shoulder. “What... what makes you think he’s even still alive?”

The voice sounded a bit distant, as if the man was speaking in the other direction. “Schuldig?”

Schuldig answered, clearly audible. “He is. I may not be connected, but he’s there.”

Crawford too the explanation upon himself, again. “Usually, telepathic amplifiers don’t last much longer than a few months, possibly a year. Whatever your friend has that is different, it’s strong.”

“Why _him_ of all people?” Jack cursed himself for the dry sob that managed to get into his speech at the word _him_.

Jack guessed correctly that Crawford hesitated because he was surprised at his emotional reaction. Hell, even Jack himself was surprised that his emotions broke free. He was not surprised that they were there, however...

Finally, Crawford broke the silence. “Amplifiers are usually empathic to a certain extent. They... react differently to people, it makes them ideal. And the ones they choose are unaware of their abilities, or else they would know how to use it against the ones who want to use them.” He paused for a short moment. “His physical state was declared as ‘operational’ from the very beginning, and his amplifying level was at ‘parameter 12’, which won’t mean anything to you, but I can assure you that it is exceptional.”

“What are the chances that his mind is still intact?” He couldn’t believe that he was able to make himself ask that.

“Captain... let me be frank.”

Jack wished – not for the first time – that he could just die.

“Under normal circumstances, the amplifiers die because their brains shut down. The mere fact that Jones is still alive means that there is something left. That is not a fact that I would usually take as a sign that his mind is functional... but... my premonitions apparently believe him to be of importance. He wouldn’t be that, if he were irreparably damaged.”

Jack tilted his head and looked at Gwen. He sighed and shook his head. He had no choice, there was simply no way he could have done anything but…  
“Okay, Crawford. You have my attention.”

Gwen waved with her hands. “Jack!” she whispered. “Trap?”

Jack just shrugged. “Don’t care,” he whispered back.

“We are currently stationed in London,” Crawford informed them. “Feel free to either come on your own or bring members of your team. We will be able to find acceptable terms of cooperation, either way.”

“I will meet you in London, then.” Jack ended the call, dropped into a chair and his head into his hands.

 

*

All of Weiß and Schwarz stared at the screen that still showed the scanned blueprint of the underground base in Cardiff and next to Gwen’s file now something equal to it of Captain Jack Harkness (if considerably less complete).

Schuldig was the first to speak. “What the hell was that? He just cracked.”

“Emotional involvement,” Crawford stated and was clearly reminded of why a relationship with a team member was generally a bad idea – not that he would have undone his own with the German if he could have. But it was still a liability. “I didn’t see that one coming.”

Farfarello who was standing next to Ken who had brought him back into the room with him tilted his head and directed a curious one-eyed stare at the picture of the Captain.  
“He defies nature.”

“You have no idea,” Crawford murmured and looked at the smiling picture of Jack Harkness. There was so much hidden behind that smile.

Omi cleared his throat in the heavy silence. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but why would Rosenkreuz be interested in him? Interested enough to fall for us using him as bait?”

All eyes were firmly on Crawford; only Farfarello cackled happily, apparently not needing that answer.

Crawford looked at all of them, one right after the other. “He can’t die.”

It was once more deadly silent.

Suddenly, Schuldig released the breath he had been holding, explosively. “Holy shit! Well...” He shook himself. “That explains a whole fucking lot.” It explained the weird presence he had been receiving from the man. _Human but more_.  
“How old is he?” It must have been... Schuldig tried to remember what he had got from him. It must have been hundreds of lives. Hundreds of deaths. He shuddered.

“I don’t know,” Crawford admitted. “What do you estimate?”

Schuldig slowly shook his head, his eyes had lost focus. “It must be... more than a thousand years.” He helplessly tried to grasp the mere concept. “Possibly several.”

“Maybe that’s why he’s still alive,” Ken suddenly said. He had heard enough of the phone call to have got the gist of it. “The other guy. You said he’s an empath. So if he was used to being around someone whose mind would equal so many lives, it might be why he’s still alive.”

Crawford’s expression cleared and he nodded. “Good thinking.” More often than he would have liked to admit, the ability of Weiß to think outside of their trained psychic box offered an insight that he might have missed, or at least got a whole lot later. “Very good.”

Ken blinked at the unused praise from the American.

Schuldig immediately agreed. “Especially if they were involved. The empathic reception must have opened up to everything the Captain had to offer.” He crossed his arms and smiled, slowly. The idea fascinated the heck out of the professional in him. “That’s brilliant.”

“They could still be connected,” Nagi timidly added.

Crawford stood up from his seat and started pacing. “If they are, which is indeed possible,” he nodded at Nagi in thanks, “bringing the Captain into their base would wreak havoc with their telepaths.”  
A slow grin formed on his face and he looked at Schuldig, hoping that the man realised the same thing.

Schuldig nodded, again. “Disconnecting him might be just as nice.” He smirked.

“Uh...” Youji ran a hand through his hair. “Care to enlighten us?”

Crawford didn’t have any premonitions, just then, but the impossible didn’t seem just as impossible, anymore.  
“Killing an amplifier would just sever the connection. Disconnecting him, on the other hand, would severely screw with their focus, if they’re not trained enough.”

“Ah, I see,” Youji said. “And their operatives never got to be trained properly.” It had not exactly been a secret. It was obvious, just from looking at their young prisoner.

“Mostly, yes,” Crawford agreed. “But we are going to have to assume that better equipped agents are at the institute. People who are too valuable to send into the field at this point.”

Nagi shivered. “You’re really planning to go in there...”

Crawford held his stare for a moment. “All efforts must now go into finding the base. It’s our first priority.”

Both teenagers nodded. It would be up to them; they were still the only ones who were able to hack themselves deep enough into Rosenkreuz’ systems to find a lead.

“Nagi,” Crawford added. “I won’t let them have you.”

Nagi bit his lip and nodded. Not letting them have him also meant that Crawford would kill him before allowing him to be captured, and Nagi had the reassurance that Crawford would not hesitate to do so. No, all of Schwarz knew too well what it meant to be in their clutches.

 

*

Jack stepped out of the train at Paddington station, Gwen right behind him. They both only had a small bag with them.

Jack had insisted on taking the train. While it was true that Rosenkreuz could have tracked them, anyway, driving into the capital with his car would have been stupidly lax, even though he had hopes that their enemies didn’t know he was involved, just yet. He had no doubt that both Rosenkreuz and Schwarz kept track of all registry plates that went somewhere.

Gwen pursed her lips. “Now what? It’s not like we can call them...”

Jack smiled. “I doubt it will take them more than five minutes to get to us.”

Gwen shivered. “Jack... why are we here? From what you told me about them, this is lunacy. There’s nothing we can do about paranormals.”

“I told you it was a bad idea for you to come with me. Me at least they can’t kill.”

“I want Ianto back, same as you.” She pondered that. “Well, maybe not exactly the same.” She smiled at Jack, trying to cheer him up. “And I’m not letting you go in there alone. It’s my job, and I’ve done it for four years without you.”

“And you’ve done it well, from what I managed to gather in the short time.” He nodded at her. “Rhys will kill you when you get back,” he added almost cheerfully.

Gwen pulled a face. “I know, but there was no way I would have allowed him to come; and he would have, ordering his mom to babysit, again.” She smiled benignly. “No, he and Lois can stay in charge of the hub. Somebody has to...” She still smiled, but there was a clear nervous edge to it. “And they never worked with Ianto, wouldn’t understand that we have to get him.”

Jack hadn’t really tried to dissuade her from joining him. He knew that it would have done no good, and it was her decision. And... he selfishly wanted someone with him.

They walked with the masses of people, until both their eyes were directed to the same spot, caught by a flash of bright copper hair. The people around them lost all meaning, they were firmly connected to the telepath who smirked at them and waited, leaning against a wall.

Gwen took a deep breath. “Okay...”

Jack nodded. “Yep. That would be the telepath.”

Gwen’s eyes widened. She could almost feel some sort of pressure on her mind, while she looked into those crisp, green eyes.

{That would be me, sweetheart.}

Gwen flinched.

“You okay?” Jack asked.

Gwen blinked at him, surprised at the sudden intrusion outside of her mind. “What? Oh. Yes...” She turned back to Schuldig and began walking towards the man.

Jack followed her, a suspicious look on his face.

{No need to give me the eye, Captain Jack.} Schuldig smirked.

Jack’s head swivelled around to Gwen. “Did he talk to you, before?”

Gwen nodded, almost physically unable to look away from the mesmerising presence in front of them.

Before they reached him, Schuldig spoke to both of them: {Interesting. You can both sense me. That is unusual.} He tilted his head and eyed the Captain. {And I’m having troubles reading you, which is even more interesting.}  
To his own surprise, Schuldig wasn’t thrown off by the thought; he was merely intrigued. Intrigued quite a bit...

When Gwen and Jack stood right in front of him, he held out his hand and shook Jack’s, then gallantly kissed Gwen’s.  
“It is a pleasure to meet you both,” he drawled. “My name is Schuldig, and don’t you dare tell me that it has to be a pseudonym. I am well aware of that,” he added the explanation in a chatty tone. “One of my instructors thought it would be funny, what with me being German.”

Jack wholeheartedly approved of that informal tone and stuck to the German’s side when he headed for the exit.

Gwen wasn’t really sure what to make of the man. He was so... something.

Schuldig ignored the very different reactions to his person and just rambled on: “To my misfortune, said instructor was also one of their only high level telepaths who was ever able to jumble my mind and erase my real name from it.”   
He lead them towards the Underground station of Paddington.

Schuldig suddenly stopped, turned to look at both and smirked. {I surpassed and killed him.} Without another word, be that telepathic or oral, he turned again and continued walking.

Jack had no problems with the sudden change of pace, but Gwen froze for a moment and hurried to keep up.  
“Did you get your name back?” she asked.

Schuldig laughed. “You’re a sweet little thing. No, I didn’t.”

They remained quiet until they were in the Underground, the doors closed behind them and the train moving.  
{We should keep this out of everyone’s ears,} Schuldig declared. {You’d better get used to it.}

Jack showed no outward reaction, he merely smiled at the German. {This is quite useful,} he admitted.

Gwen turned her wide-eyed stare at Jack. “I...”

{Nu-uh,} Schuldig interrupted her and tapped his temple.

Gwen licked her lips. {I can hear Jack, too.}

Schuldig grinned. {And he can hear you, as long as I keep us all connected. For a conversation it seems advisable.}

Gwen allowed a quick undirected thought that a telepath on the team would probably make her paranoid within days, but it did seem horribly useful...

{Thank you.}

Gwen rolled her eyes. {You’re nosy.}

Schuldig laughed out loud, earning him some curious stares from the few other passengers that were riding with them, at that time.  
{The nature of a telepath, I’m afraid.}

Gwen had to snort. For a cold-blooded and insanely dangerous assassin, he was kind of amusing, and the contradictions made her head spin.

{Ah, yes, about that...} Schuldig continued. {You have a serious problem with killing people,} he said directed at Gwen but clearly audible for Jack.

Gwen averted her eyes, and Jack intervened.

{That is not a bad thing, you know. Even if you might have forgotten,} Jack said, staring at Schuldig, coldly.

Schuldig didn’t seem particularly impressed and just smiled. {My dear Captain, you are about to enter a base with eight highly trained assassins. We are planning to take out an organisation containing a high number of hardly trained paranormals, more than half of which are teenagers or younger. Making prisoners is in very nearly all cases not an option.}  
His eyes wandered to Gwen who had paled, considerably. {Now, my dear, if you have a problem with that, I suggest you get out at the next station, go back to London Central and drive home to hubby and kid.}

Gwen felt sick.

Schuldig tilted his head, having the inexplicable urge to somehow reassure her. That was not a feeling he had often. {It might make it easier for you to know that death is the best solution for those brain-washed puppets.}

Gwen was about to protest that death was never the solution, but Schuldig didn’t let her.

{When I was still there, I wished for death more often than I can count. Trust me, even if they’re conditioned not to allow the thought, it will be a relief for them.}

{If you had known, back then,} Jack began, entering the conversation with ease, {that you could get out, would you have wanted to die, anyway?}

Schuldig stared at him, the already cold look in his eyes freezing even more. {Had I known that it would take fifteen years for me to get out of their grip, you bet I would have chosen death.}

Jack held the stare, then nodded, once.

Schuldig’s expression switched from dark to cheerful within a second, which was quite freaky to watch.   
“This would be our stop. Let’s go,” he said in a tone to match his demeanour and lead the way.

Gwen and Jack followed him, but the dread they had felt before meeting the telepath suddenly seemed like fear of the dark without a teddy, compared to the very real fear of what was lying ahead of them that they had become aware of now.


	6. Waiting

Gwen felt eerily transported to her first time she had entered the hub, even though the entrance through a simple garage wasn’t as flashy as the lift Torchwood had, but at least the lift they were in, now, went down, too. Down a long time. She absently wondered how they could build something like that in the middle of London on short notice. According to Jack, the two teams hadn’t been stationed in England for more than maybe ten months.

“We seized available infrastructure,” Schuldig informed her, smirking.

Jack snorted. He had been thinking something similar to Gwen, apparently, and he had already come to the conclusion that Schuldig was hinting at.  
“Meaning you brainwashed some people into believing that it was yours?”

“Something like that,” Schuldig allowed. “Mainly, though, our two very adept hackers found this little gem that was supposed to be another Underground station, and when they stopped getting the funds, they wanted to turn it into a multi level parking, and when _that_ project was abandoned about seven years ago, it just sat here, waiting for someone to hack into the mainframe and delete its existence altogether.”

“Your hackers must be quite good,” Gwen blinked at him.

“You have no idea.”

Jack tilted his head. “Actually, I think we do. They got into the Torchwood system within minutes.”

The elevator dinged and they got out.

Schuldig’s smirk widened, fractionally. “It only took seconds, and it wasn’t even the kids’ doing. Crawford merely used their program.”  
With that he turned and opened one of the doors.

Jack hurried after him. “Would you consider sharing some of that in return for us helping you?”

“Honey, if we actually succeed in taking them out, you can have whatever the hell you want,” Schuldig declared emphatically.

A voice from deeper within the room chuckled. “Shouldn’t you be asking me, first?”

Brad Crawford came towards them from behind some computer screens. Unlike his scolding words, he was grinning at Schuldig and their guests.

Gwen, who had still been trapped in the memory of her first discovery of Torchwood that she was almost disappointed to only find a large room with numerous tables and computers and... weapons. And no pterodactyls, nor hands in jars, nor aliens in cells.

Schuldig nudged her shoulder and brought her back. “And we didn’t even make you deliver pizza.” He grinned, amused at the memory he had caught.

Jack had to laugh a bit and even Gwen’s lips twitched. Then she remembered Ianto, and how he had smiled are her, his eyes twinkling with mischief when he told her to go on and enter a new life... a life that she now knew would never let her go.

Schuldig’s amused grin faded into a different shade. “He’s cute.” He turned to look at Jack. “I think I understand you.” He understood the man even better than he would ever tell him; the emotions coming off the Captain were almost palpable, even if it was draining to read his thoughts.

He pivoted to look at Crawford, next. “Let’s get the...” he caught another thought from Gwen and grinned, again, “... eye-candy out of there alive and well, shall we?”

Gwen moaned, involuntarily. “I knew you reminded me of someone.”

“You know, you’ve got a point, there,” Jack couldn’t help but admit.

Crawford came to a halt before their guests and had to smile at Schuldig’s enthusiasm. It was such a nice change from the scared creature he had seen too often, recently.  
“Brad Crawford.” He shook Gwen’s hand. “Mrs Williams, welcome.” Then he shook Jack’s hand, firming the grip, slightly. “Captain.” He nodded at him.

He quickly glanced after Schuldig, as the other man went into the adjoined kitchen to find something to eat.  
“I can assure you that Schuldig is very professional in his job. Even if sometimes it doesn’t appear that way,” he raised his voice to make sure Schuldig heard it.

Schuldig promptly yelled back: “If I didn’t know you were fun in bed, I’d call you boring, Bradley.”

Gwen almost choked on her sudden laugh and snorted instead. Jack smirked.

Crawford ignored the comment – he had seen it coming after all – and cleared his throat. “I believe you would feel more comfortable speaking with Tsukiyono, yes?”

“I’d appreciate it.” It was still possible that Schwarz had the lot of Weiß brainwashed or something, but when Crawford led them behind some equipment to where two teenagers were huddled in front of several computers, that fear was gone. Maybe he didn’t really know what somebody who was truly brainwashed by a telepath would have looked like, but those two were... close, even though they were working. Content, somehow. And young, God, were they young.

The blond kid stood, immediately when they were in sight and smiled at them.

Crawford stood between them. “Tsukiyono Omi. Captain Harkness, Gwen Williams.”

Omi greeted them, politely. “Good morning.”

Jack came right to the point. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to know the status from you...”

“Certainly.” He nodded towards the screens and led the guests around to computers to look at them. “We have narrowed the location down to Switzerland.” He quickly glanced at Crawford. “We’re still taking care of that politician, here, while the other programs are running, by the way.”

Crawford nodded. “But if there is a time conflict...”

“We focus on the location, of course,” he answered immediately.

Jack fidgeted. “So what are you going to do until you do find the location? I mean...” he shook his head. “What do you want us to do?”

Crawford looked at him, just the hint of a smile in the corner of his lips. “I believe that you would be more than capable of being an asset to this team, Captain.”

Jack put his hands on his hips and grinned. “I kind of almost saw that one coming, precog.”

Crawford chuckled. “You understand that even though we have the country, locating them might take some more time, and integrating the two of you into the team could be crucial, in time.”

Gwen bit her lips. “I’m... not sure I’ll be any good as an assassin.”

Crawford tilted his head. “Mrs Williams...”

“Gwen, please. Mrs Williams makes me feel like...”

Schuldig sauntered around the computers. “Like you’re supposed to be somewhere else?” he asked, nursing his beer and smirking.

Gwen swivelled around and stared at him, but she couldn’t for the life of her deny that. It wouldn’t have done any good to a telepath, anyway. Her angry face crumbled within seconds and she averted her eyes. “Yeah.”

Crawford gave Schuldig the evil eye. “Gwen,” he corrected, “there will be investigation, planning and security matters that need to be taken care of.”

Gwen nodded. “Planning to send someone out to kill somebody else.”

“Yes.” There really was no need to sugar-coat anything. “Has the Captain explained to you what the organisation we are planning to take out is capable of doing? What they _are_ doing?”

“Yes.” She lifted her head, defiantly. “But that is no reason to kill innocent kids.”

“Gwen,” he made Gwen sound exactly like Mrs Williams, which was kind of disturbing. “Each and every one of those operatives, regardless of age, will kill without hesitation at the flick of a hand. Almost all of them have already done so.”

Gwen swallowed. Kids. Just kids. Killing.

“You see, the first hit usually is early on and a random target, to make sure they are able to go through with it.”

“And if they’re not?”

“We haven’t been on the inside of the organisation for four years, but during the time before, that has never happened.” His eyes hardened. “Make no mistake, Gwen Williams, if you are a risk to this team, you won’t have to fear anyone but me.”

“I won’t...” she stopped and breathed. “I have agreed to come here and to work with you towards a common goal.” She searched some more words to explain what she was feeling. “I... won’t endanger anyone on purpose, but I really don’t know if I can shoot a child without hesitation.” She breathed through the constricting feeling in her throat and chest.

“I could take care of that little inhibition,” Schuldig said, nonchalantly.

Gwen lost her vision for a moment, as soon as she realised what the words she had heard actually meant.  
“God, no,” she choked, fighting the urge to just throw up. She never could have lived with herself if someone would have erased her scruples. Scruples that kept her from killing.

She felt a firm hand on her shoulder, but other than she expected, it was not Jack, but Crawford.  
“Gwen, as I understand it, you are quite adept at dealing with prisoners?”

Gwen shook herself. Enough was enough. It wasn’t like they were in the field, already. She was sure that there was something she could do to avoid this whole killing thing until then. “I... I guess.”

“She is,” Jack confirmed, immediately.

Crawford nodded to another man who had come closer, unnoticed. “This is Hidaka Ken. He will show you to our current prisoner.”

Gwen rubbed her face. “Can’t you just read his mind if you want to know something?”

“He might know things he doesn’t think are important,” Schuldig explained. “I can scan him for everything, but that is time-consuming and doesn’t always lead to something.” He snorted. “People have a lot of crap in their heads.”

“Adding to that,” Crawford added, “a precog can hide premonitions, because they’re not regular thoughts and exist outside the regular time line. Schuldig thinks that he might have hidden something from Rosenkreuz.”

Gwen didn’t notice the quick look Crawford and Ken shared, she only really looked at the young man, when he smiled at her.

“Hi, I’m Ken.” He held out his hand.

Gwen took it and tried to smile.

“This way, please.”

The moment Gwen was out of the room, Jack turned to Crawford.

“I should have seen this coming.”

“And you should have kept her from coming,” Crawford threw back.

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have called _her_. With her knowing that we could rescue a team member, there was no way I could have kept her from coming, without actually running away from her.”

The two stared each other down.

Crawford chuckled. “As it happens, we are going to need her.”

Jack grinned back. “I figured that, thanks.” His smile faded. “That leaves us with the problem of getting her used to the thought of what this could mean.”

“She will begin to understand.” Crawford looked at his watch. “In about ten minutes.”

“Oh...” Jack nodded. “Your prisoner is young?”

“You catch on fast.”

Schuldig interrupted the two egomaniacs before they could pamper each other’s egos, any more. “She’s reacting to Japanese,” he said. “You had a Japanese woman on your team?” He already knew the answer to that question, but people usually preferred to be talked to.

“We did,” Jack confirmed. “Sato Toshiko. She was killed.”

A small gasp followed the mention of the name.

“Sato?” Nagi asked. “Tech?” His eyes practically sparkled, and Omi very much liked seeing it in him. “I... I have...” Nagi began to type furiously on a computer. “I have schematics by her...”  
He turned to beam at Jack as if he had just told him he was on a first name basis with the Queen and that she had now allowed him to call her granny.  
“I am using programs based on her designs.” He gesticulated at the screen showing some code or other. It meant neither this nor that to either Crawford or Jack, but Omi now stared wide-eyed at the screen.

“Are you sure?” Omi asked.

“Yes, I’m sure!” Nagi answered. He looked back at the codes like at a Christmas tree; then suddenly, the clear blue eyes clouded over. “She was killed?” he asked with a tiny voice.

Jack blinked. It was weird being flipped back and forth through memories, images, emotions. Seeing this kid be head over heels over something a woman had created whom he had worked with, stood against the odds with... who had died in his arms.  
For just a moment, Tosh was alive again, smiling timidly but proudly at an accomplishment on her computer, looking over her shoulder, not quite ready to take the praise Jack tried to give her, but pleased, nonetheless.

“Uh...” Jack shook himself. “Yes, she was. Too many people died already.”

Nagi’s eyes remained firmly on Jack’s, something that Tosh never did for long. After a long while, he tilted his head. “I have no doubt that every member of your team you ever had is equally unique in their own way.”

Jack didn’t even notice that he nodded.

Nagi nodded in return. “Let’s get your man out of there, then.”

Schuldig gave them about ten seconds according to his own count (that could have been slightly off, considering his impatience), before he added: “Professional uniqueness aside, I’m sure you’ll be glad to get the personal one back.”

Crawford crossed his arms, and the teenagers tried not to grin too obviously.

Jack’s lip twitched for a second at the sheer nerve of that man, but the pain made the twitch die quickly.  
“I would say I’d die for him, but that didn’t work out too well last time.” He had wished with all his might that he would not wake up to a world without Ianto, but he did. Ianto had remained dead... except that he apparently wasn’t.

Jack had thought that he had seen all the weirdness all the worlds had to offer. He had been wrong.  
“How... how did they get him? He was dead. I was there, I saw him die!” His voice broke at the last word, again.

“I do not know,” Crawford said. “But taking what I do know, I would say that whatever alien was dropping by for a visit must have scanned him to let Rosenkreuz know that he was a possible amplifier.” He sighed, a little helplessly. “My estimate is that he was directly targeted and never really died.”

“Those are a lot of maybes.” Jack wasn’t overtly pleased.

“We can try to find out what exactly they did, but recovery is definitely more important, wouldn’t you agree?”

Jack knew of course that he didn’t care one bit about how Ianto survived as long as he did. As he had explained to Gwen the day he had met her, he used things he got to use, he didn’t care about why something was amazing, as long as it was.  
On the other hand, it wasn’t much like him to just follow someone around like a blind puppy. “You know, sooner or later I won’t just eat up your excuses and follow along just because you say so.”

Crawford cleared his throat. “What would you be willing to do to get him out?”

“Okay, Crawford, enough is enough!” He didn’t need his weakness pointed out to him, repeatedly. He knew it well enough, thanks ever so much.

“Oh, no, you misunderstood me, that wasn’t a rhetorical question nor meant to distract you. I do need to know, so I can plan your possible actions when I get a premonition.” He smirked. “I didn’t think that fighting over things that I do not have anything even close to an answer to would get us anywhere.”

Jack gave up. For now. “I would do more than he’d want me to.”

Crawford considered that for a moment. Then he nodded. “That is something I can work with.”

“I will be having conditions, in time, too, Crawford.”

“Undoubtedly.”

 

*

Gwen followed Ken another floor down, expecting cells like they had in the hub. Since a spitting image of the hub wasn’t what she had got before, she shouldn’t have been surprised that it wasn’t what she got now, either.

It was just another floor, this one with more doors. They looked like ordinary doors.

In front of one of them, Ken stopped. “Griffin is in here,” he said.

Gwen eyed the door suspiciously.

“Don’t worry. He can’t hear us, and he’s not a telepath. He’s a precog... not a very good one.” He tilted his head. “At least not now. He could have been big, with decent instruction and without being sent into the field after only the most necessary training.”

“The most necessary training meaning?”

“The most necessary training meaning that he will do what is asked of him without question, that he won’t be overwhelmed with premonitions nor folds when one hits him, and that he can hold a gun without shaking.” Ken snorted. “Mind you, that doesn’t mean that he can actually hit anything even with a steady hand.”

Gwen’s hand had been in front of her mouth the moment she had heard the first part. “And how old is he?”

“I’m not sure. We estimate about fifteen or sixteen.”

Gwen swallowed. “And they send kids like this into the field, with no way of defending themselves against people like you?”

Ken nodded. “They’re cannon fodder. They’re just supposed to gain them time.” He tilted his head towards the door. “This one we could only just keep from killing himself when he realised that his team was dead and that he couldn’t get away.”

With that, he opened the door and let Gwen enter, first.

Gwen stepped into the dark room, only after a moment noticing the huddled figure in the corner.

The boy looked up. “Hello, Gwen Williams.”

“Hello.” She went closer, just one step at a careful step. “Hello... Griffin.”

“I know why you’re here.”

Gwen laughed, nervously. “Really? I’m not even sure what I’m doing here.”

Ken switched on the light, and Gwen could see the still half-full plate in front of the boy.

“Haven’t you been hungry?”

The boy shook his head. “They sent me out too soon. Which is why I’m not dead, yet, by my hand.”

Gwen lowered herself in front of him and sat, never taking her eyes off him.

“They don’t care enough about me to try and hunt me down.”

Ken leaned against the wall next to the door, looking puzzled. Why the hell was he talking now?

Griffin lifted his eyes and they landed directly on Ken. “Because I was waiting for her.”

Gwen looked from Griffin to Ken and back. “For me?”

“I saw you,” Griffin whispered and pulled back farther into the corner, as far as it went. “When I was very young.”

Gwen resisted the urge to tell him that he still was. Just a little boy...

“You and the other man, you can make him help us.”

“We can make who help you?”

Griffin’s eyes flickered to Ken and back to Gwen. “The telepath. Rosenkreuz are afraid of him. He can undo the programming in some of us.”

“Programming?” Gwen asked. “You mean your conditioning, your training?”

Griffin nodded. “I was able to hide that one premonition from them, because I’d had it long before I ever got to them. It was also the reason that some of the programming didn’t take. Not all of it.” He added the last part, shivering. “I was waiting for you.”

Did he mean that he didn’t really try to kill himself, Gwen wondered. “You didn’t try to… avoid being captured by…”

“I… resisted. For just long enough.” Every word obviously strained him, as if he was still fighting something. “He can… break it.”

Gwen really wanted to reach out and touch the boy. It was clear that he was in pain; it looked like a migraine from hell. She managed to hold herself back, though, since Griffin probably would have panicked, had she tried to get any closer.

Ken however was still far enough away to step closer, and he shook his head. “Schuldig said there is nothing he can do about your conditioning.”

Griffin squeezed his eyes shut and shivered more strongly. “He can.” He bit his lips. “He is much, much stronger than their telepaths. They were just strong enough to not let him realise that before he was able to use all of it.”

Ken wanted to know more. “How come Crawford doesn’t know any of that?”

Griffin’s eyes were suddenly very clear, and it was obvious that, even though his training was never completed, he was a professional – or at the very least at the brink of one.

“I would have thought it was obvious,” Griffin almost smiled. “Emotional blind spot.”


	7. Broken

Gwen blinked. “What? He is blind to... the German?”

Ken stared at both of them.

“Not completely. But he only watches the future visions, not the ones that lead to the point Schuldig is now at.”

Gwen wasn’t really sure what to say to that. “Why?”

“Because it hurts,” Ken said, nodding at Griffin. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

The door banged open and Schuldig stood there staring at the boy like the demon from hell most of his targets thought him to be. “Okay, you little maggot,” he said, his voice low and dangerous and far too calm for the thunder in his eyes. Slowly, he walked closer.

Griffin shrank back, his breathing accelerated.

Gwen didn’t seem particularly impressed by Schuldig’s attitude, even if that usually was not a smart thing to do, and frowned at him from where she was sitting on the floor. “Stop that! You’re frightening him!”

“I don’t give a fuck,” Schuldig shot back, never taking his eyes off Griffin. “You think I can break the conditioning? You think I can _help_ you?” He said the word help as if it had personally offended him. “What makes you think, even for a second, that I have any interest in preserving any single one of that _god_ forsaken institute?” The last two words were spat in disgust.

Tears leaked from Griffin’s eyes, but he returned the look, anyway, staying strong. He had known this moment would come, he had known it would be difficult, hard, _painful_... and he knew how to push Schuldig, he had foreseen that long ago.  
“Because you can,” he said, steadily.

All Griffin could see after he said that was green eyes. Green eyes that pulled him into a world of excruciating pain; he got lost in it, was pulled deeper and deeper; it felt like drowning in his own memories.   
His memories – images, noise, touches, smells, tastes – they were no longer a passive part of him; they were reaching for him, holding him with their icy cold and hard grips, sharp and burning nails cutting into him like knives from _hell_. They cut him open and ripped every last moment from the corners of his mind, leaving a searing trail behind them.

It didn’t stop, it went on and on and on, until his mind wanted nothing more than pass out from the torture, but couldn’t, because the hands wouldn’t let him go.

In the distance, he heard a sound; yelling. It grew louder and louder, breaking through the fog around his ears, until his eyes could focus, again and were blinded by the small light bulb in his cell... and he realised that the yelling was his own.

He still saw the green, demonic eyes, now with his own and not just in his mind. Then the world went dark, and he never noticed that Gwen caught his lithe form when it fell.

 

“What the hell did you do?!” Gwen all but screeched at Schuldig.

Schuldig stood there, stared at the boy, dumbstruck. He breathed heavily.

“What. Did. You. Do?”

“I... broke it.” Schuldig said, not even able to believe his own words as he said them.

“You what?” Ken gasped.

Schuldig slowly shook his head, unable to tear his eyes off the boy. “I did. I broke it.” He didn’t even know how, he just did. His anger had practically been boiling, along with his desperation. The nerve of that little bastard, telling him that he could beat what for years had been unreachable... or it was what he had thought was unreachable.  
Those freaking, fucking, manipulative, sick... bastards. His nails dug into his palms, and he had to keep himself from biting through his lips.

He felt a presence tickle his senses that broke through his thoughts, and he finally turned.

Crawford was standing in the door, his face unreadable.

“Brad?”

“Yes?”

“How did I do that?”

“I don’t... know.” Crawford didn’t have a single clue, not if Schuldig didn’t have one. And Schuldig was the one to actually _do_ it.

Jack turned around the corner, apparently having followed Crawford. “And I don’t care. But you’d better find a way to do it, again. Because I am not going to agree to help you kill children if there is a way around it.”

That seemed to bring some senses back into the German. “As I said to the kid, I have no interest in helping any more of those bastards.”

Jack smirked. “And as the kid told you, you can beat them. Isn’t that reason enough to do it?”

Schuldig wasn’t surprised that Jack knew this. Crawford might not have been the telepath, but he was perfectly capable of foreseeing conversations, before they happened.   
He stared into Jack’s eyes, eyes that had a light in them he had never seen before. Not quite like this…

{Can you hear me?} Jack asked.

Schuldig almost rolled his eyes, but he didn’t. He didn’t want anyone interrupting their conversation. He isolated them into his mind, made them both temporarily unaware of anything or anyone around them. It was like they were standing in a dark room with no walls or floor.  
{Yes?}

Jack blinked and looked around. {Always knew you had a dark mind,} he said, sardonically.

Schuldig smiled a little. {That’s what you get. You wanted to tell me something?}

{I won’t even try to talk you into doing it, because I know you will, anyway.}

{Oh?}

{Oh, yes. They made you think that you are weaker than them. It was their one, big trick.} Jack smirked. {And now you know that you were wrong. That you have the power to take their lies and shove them up their asses.} He smirk widened. {And get them where it hurts the most; destroy their own belief in their omnipotence.}

Schuldig tilted his head. {You know me well for someone who’s never met me.}

{I know myself.} The smirk faded. Some things, men like them kept repeating. No matter if they were considered the good guys or the bad guys. {I wish I hadn’t given up, you know,} he said. And, oh, how he wished for that. Especially now that he knew that there had things that could have been done. He could have just refused to let Ianto die; he could have refused to take him with him. He could have found ways to undo what had happened… so many ‘could haves’.  
{I gave up because I thought I couldn’t go on without my reason. They made me become a monster.}

Schuldig saw what had happened through Jack’s eyes, now. He didn’t even have to look for the memory, it was right there on the surface.   
He saw a young man die in the arms of the one he loved; he saw how the love that was ripped from him ripped something else...   
How he lost the boy, his grand-son, through his doing, and with him he lost the reason to not give up.

{And now you have a target, again,} Schuldig noticed.

Jack nodded. {I do.}

Schuldig suddenly blinked. {Huh... should ask Brad about that...}

{About what?} Jack was about to ask, but before the words could fully form, their surroundings came back as if someone had turned a switch.  
He looked around a little lost but fascinated. “Uh...”

“Brad!”

Brad just sighed. “What?”

“What just happened?” Gwen asked Jack. “You spaced out for a second.”

Jack blinked at her. “Just a second? I thought it was longer.”

“What?”

Schuldig didn’t have time for that and just rolled his eyes at them. “Brad, do you think they actively targeted the Captain, here?”

That caught Gwen’s attention, again. “Who targeted him?”

“Targeted?” Jack asked at the same time.

Brad considered that for a moment, finally, he nodded. “Possible. If you can’t kill or capture, you destroy.” He turned to look at Jack.

Breath caught in Jack’s throat, when he understood that implication. He had been the bait. “And they got a perfect empath on top of it.”   
Jack crumbled right then, as if the realisation was a literal ton of bricks burying him underneath it. The pain edged on his face was palpable, tears flowing from one moment to the next, without him even noticing.

Gwen would have been at his side in a second, but she couldn’t just drop the boy she was holding who was still out for the count.  
“Jack?”

Jack was in a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions, all tumbling around him. “Because of me. It was because of me...” Jack babbled. The darkness around him came back, as if Schuldig was...

{HEY!}

Jack gasped. {What? Where...?}

{They really pulled a number on you, man.} Schuldig studied him, curious. Huh. That was odd. It really did look like they pulled several numbers on the Captain. There were triggers…  
Fascinating.

Jack felt the pull he had briefly noticed when he had first met the German and couldn’t keep himself from meeting the green eyes, again.

{There you are,} Schuldig said, pleased. {It might have been the other way around. They probably located Jones, first.}

Jack shook his head.

{Not all is about you, you know.}

{In the end, it always comes down to me.}

Schuldig snorted. {Rosenkreuz had paranormals all over the world. You hardly register. Trust me, they located him, first.}

{But...}

{Yeah,} Schuldig shrugged. {Your kid’s probably dead so they could break you. Either that, or they would have gotten all the others. Basic A or B choice, they always win. Precogs do it all the time.}

Jack was about to lose himself, again, Schuldig could see it.

And Schuldig wouldn’t let him. {You did save the kids, though.} At least now he knew what had happened, four years ago, and he had honestly thought he had seen the height of cruelty, long before that. He had been wrong. {Your kid saved them.}

Jack went from desperate to angry in a second. {You just said that this was because of me! That means the deal was supposed to fail from the start!} he yelled.

Schuldig shrugged, again. {Oh, they would have taken the kids, if they could have, make no mistake. And they would have had you, too. Think about it.}

{No, I was...}

{Dead, you were,} Schuldig interrupted him. {You would have been dead for long enough for your darling aliens to catch a hold of you and deliver you to Rosenkreuz as the cherry on top of their yummy deal.}

Jack thought about that. It was a bit far-fetched...

{Yeah, well, welcome to my world. The world of precogs, who know all the steps before you take them.}

The world outside of their minds and around them shifted again, and Jack released the breath he was holding. Then he turned to look at Crawford, a cold look on his face.  
“You had better be the best precog they ever had, then.”

Crawford nodded. “I am.” He smirked, slowly. “And I’ve known that all along.”

Jack turned to Schuldig. “And now you know you’re better than them, too.”

Schuldig nodded, seriously. “I’ll tell you what,” he suddenly said, averting his eyes. “I’ll save some of the kids if I can. Not making any promises, and I’m not taking any risks. I'm definitely not taking those risks inside of the institute or the likes. But outside of that... I'm game.”

“Hold on!” Gwen demanded. She carefully lowered Griffin to the ground and stood. She ransacked her brain for what she was trying to say, but her mouth started way earlier than her thoughts would have been ready.  
“If they’re so all fucking powerful and all knowing and whatnot, how come they didn’t see you coming? How come they didn’t know all along that they should have killed you in your diapers or something? Why didn’t they get both Ianto and the kids? Why...”

“Oh, shove a sock in it, Williams!” Schuldig snapped. “That’s not how it works.”

Crawford put a calming hand on Schuldig’s shoulder. “Go find Aya, I’ll take it from here.”

Schuldig wanted to protest, but he knew himself that he needed to calm down, and he had long since discovered that being connected to Aya’s frustratingly controlled mind helped him focus.  
After a short moment of defiance in his eyes, he lowered them and followed Ken out of the cell.

“Mrs Williams,” Crawford began, “if it were that easy, they would have succeeded in taking control of this planet decades ago.”

Gwen kept her curious stare on Crawford and didn’t say a word.

Jack wasn’t all that interested in the answer. While he might not have been able to actually read Schuldig’s mind during his stay in it, he did grasp some basic concepts. He listened with one ear, anyway. Knowing what Crawford would say – or more importantly, what he wouldn’t say – might tell him something.

“As I said, I am the best precog they ever had, but I cannot see everything at all times. The human brain isn’t meant to process that kind of information.”

“Oh, that depends on the brain, I guess,” Jack kind of rambled to himself, half-amused. “Then again, he wouldn’t exactly constitute as human, would he?”

Crawford lifted an eyebrow at him, but didn’t question what he said. For now. There would be more time for that, later. After all, a man who couldn’t die surely knew some other interesting people.

He continued: “So, for one, the precog can only process what his brain allows. And then there are...disturbances.”

“What kind of disturbances?” Jack asked, intervening despite his intentions.

“People with the paranormal ability to disrupt the flow; places that contain shifts...” He looked at Jack. “But then that would be your speciality, wouldn’t it?”

“Maybe.”

Crawford chuckled. “Captain, I might not have all the information about what Torchwood does, but Rosenkreuz has enough intel for me to get the picture. Cardiff? As if trained telepaths wouldn’t notice the constantly erratic brain signatures.”

“So, aliens register differently?”

“Apparently. Though we didn’t register them as such. Just minor disturbances.” He cleared his throat. “I was also one of two precogs who noticed a shift in time and most likely space, as well.”

Jack nodded. “Makes sense, I guess.” Space and time were connected, and if the rift activity disrupted either of those, somebody who was connected to the future would naturally notice something.

“My premonitions are extremely organised, which is also the reason why I am stronger than most. It’s not that I see more, it’s that my brain can make it out.”

“So, you would of course notice a disorganised time-line.”

“Precisely.” He tilted his head. “I might even consider telling you that one of our team members is a walking disruption, himself.”

“The one who is no psychic,” Jack caught on, immediately. “The Irish man.”

“You heard of him.”

Jack pulled a face. “I saw pictures of his handiwork.”

Crawford nodded. “I imagine you didn’t like it.”

Jack’s eyes flickered to Gwen and back to Crawford.

Crawford continued: “He is manageable.”

“Oh, wonderful!” Jack burst out, sarcastically.

“Captain, did you expect to find my team incomplete? Because I assure you, Farfarello is as much part of this team as everyone else, and more so than you. You ought to remember that.”

Jack was about to demand to either meet Farfarello or get a guarantee to never ever see him; he wasn’t sure which he was going to say out loud, and then the boy on the floor stirred, and all their attention went elsewhere, anyway.

Gwen was by his side, right away, brushing a strand of hair back from his forehead. “Hey.” She smiled at him.

Griffin blinked. “I told you,” he croaked.

Crawford stepped to their side and crouched next to them within the blink of an eye. “Playtime’s over. Who are you? What’s your level?”

Gwen put a reassuring hand on the boy’s shoulder, once more scowling at Crawford. “Will you stop it!”

The boy sat and waved her off. “Permission to speak freely, Oracle.”

Crawford snorted. “Schuldig broke the conditioning and you’re still asking? And stop calling me that, it was the name of a slave.”

“And you are your own man, aren’t you, Crawford?”

Crawford tilted his head. “Quite the attitude you have there. It took Nagi ages to develop one, again.”

The boy immediately shrank back.

Crawford chuckled. “It’s quite alright. I appreciate a back bone.” He nodded and stood, again. “Level?”

“Registered level six.”

Crawford crossed his arms. “How the hell did a low level precog manage to hide something from the scanners?” He frowned. “Hidden telepathy?”

Griffin shook his head. “No, sir. I think it was an accident, a fluke. I got to keep my name, because nobody ever called me by my real name in my family, so the erased the nickname, first.”

Crawford shook his head in disbelief and let the words sink in. He had already watched so many possible futures concerning this young man, and he kept coming to the same conclusion: they needed him. He was an ally. However, he was not sure as to how the boy had come to fool the elders and their scanning telepaths.   
The story kind of made sense, and it would be oh so fitting that the impeccable plans would fail with something as mundane as an altered sense of self, triggered by a nickname of affection.

“Then there was a premonition I had when I was little and still with my family. A dream.” His clear eyes rested on Gwen for a moment, before they returned to the precog. “Once the training had started, it resurfaced, because my brain was able to recognise the pattern for what it was.”

“And that was before you lost your name.”

“Yes,” he said, quietly. “I had the premonition linked to the blue eyes that I knew would help me to my name. And I hid it.”

“In a childhood dream,” Crawford concluded.

Griffin nodded and looked at Gwen, again. “I didn’t consciously remember you, or they would have found it. But I remembered the feeling of being safe, free.”

“What happened to your family, Griffin?”

Griffin smiled a small smile. “They’re dead, of course. Paranormals are harvested by the institute, once they are located.”

Gwen felt that knot of dread return. “Harvested?”

Crawford stepped in. “Usually, after the targets have been located, an accident is staged that kills all involved who could look for the child.” He shrugged. “It’s not that they have to, really, they could just alter their memories and the data. However, killing is faster and a way to assess future assassins in the field.”

“Much like our young friend, here, right?” asked Jack.

“He is just a boy!” Gwen whispered, urgently.

Griffin did nothing but stare at Gwen until she returned the look, then he said: “The boy I was, has been killed with my family. Yet there might still be a man inside me, not a monster. But I do not know that.”

Gwen nodded decisively. She had made up her mind. “Fine. First, we need to get you out of this cell and something decent to eat and wear.”

“Uh... Gwen,” Jack said, only seeing Crawford rub the bridge of his nose. “Sympathy is a good thing and all, but he still is a killer, and I’m not entirely convinced that whatever programming was in his brain is actually gone. He could be a plant.”

“He is a boy!” insisted Gwen.

Crawford cleared his throat. “Please, Mrs Williams, Captain. You will have to make a choice.” He caught both their eyes, making sure they listened. “It appears to be possible that Schuldig can break the conditioning in some of the agents. Those and only those can be allowed to live. We have neither the facilities nor the hands to take psychic prisoners.”  
He straightened even more, if that was possible for someone as uptight as him. “Now I ask you, are you ready to trust the ones that my telepath deems safe or not? Because if you do not, we have to take them out. All of them.”

Jack breathed deeply and held his breath before releasing it in a rush. Perfect.   
Not like he had a choice, and he fucking knew it.

Crawford smiled. He knew the answer, anyway.   
“Well then,” he said, almost gleeful. “I believe it is time to see how the two of you work as an addition to this team.”

Gwen and Jack shared an uncomfortable look. That could... prove to be interesting.


	8. Revelations

Gwen adjusted her headset and forced herself to smile at the person entering the large glass doors and approaching her desk.

“Good evening, sir,” she said.

The man nodded at her. “Good evening.” He peeked at her name tag. “Gwen.”

“Minister,” she acknowledged. She tried not to fight against the light pressure in her mind, hiding her true thoughts under the giddy surface of a young woman meeting face to face with an attractive, young minister who was trying to better the world.

Along with her own mind and the smokescreen of the mind overlaying it, she could almost sense a bit of what the man in front of her was conveying.

The moment the minister had entered the lift and the doors had closed, Gwen shuddered.  
“You could have warned me about that,” she murmured into thin air.

{Just a taste of what they are capable of.}

“Next time, tell me,” she gritted out. Her stomach churned. “That was sick.”

{Mind on your work, Mrs Williams.}

Gwen rolled her eyes. After a week, she had deciphered the ways in which Schuldig would address her, and _Mrs Williams_ was always used to annoy her. He did that. Often.  
Crawford annoyed her just by being him. The _Mrs Williams_ he used was as much part of him as anything else.

She shook her head and turned to the computer. “There we go, you little bastard.” God, she had seen that guy on television, kissing babies... babies that he would sacrifice without blinking if it was asked of him.

As planned, she disabled the lift, the moment the man had left it and then followed him via security camera.

The things she had learned from both Weiß and Schwarz, the things those people had seen and done...  
She was once more reminded that aliens weren’t the real threat to humanity. The real threat were the humans, themselves.

Under the cheerful conversations she could have with the members of Weiß – even the ever distand Aya Fujimiya – lurked so much pain and darkness, it made her head spin. At the same time, she could play cards with Youji and Ken or watch TV with Omi when he wasn’t glued in front of his computer or drink a cup of tea with Aya. All the while she knew that their lives had made them killers.

Then there was Schwarz, who mostly still confused her. She could almost understand Crawford and Schuldig, who were frighteningly professional at what they did. Nagi was that little lost boy who would hardly say a word or barely smile even for his boyfriend, but could kill ruthlessly. From the few odd bits she had gathered from Youji, she didn’t want to imagine what that poor child had to endure when he was younger.  
And... Farfarello. Confusion’s middle name. She knew what the man as capable of; she knew of his mental illness (after all, she saw all the medication in the cabinet in the kitchen)... and despite that, he didn’t really frighten her. And _that_ frightened her.

Weiß had spent years fighting monsters like there were in Rosenkreuz. Schwarz had to _endure_ it.

And people like that sick bastard of a minister were part of it. Her muscles tensed, as she watched the small screens, where the man walked past.

Sick, twisted _bastard_!

{You should turn off the security camera, my dear.}

Gwen remained stubborn. {I helped set this up. It’s only fair to you, me and him that I watch what I did.}  
And watch she did. She watched as the man entered his office, switched to another camera to see him from the inside of the darkened room, the light from outside in his back making him appear as dark as he really, truly was, deep down under that fake, disgusting smile...

{Gwen.}

Gwen blinked and looked around, suddenly startled at the soft tinge of the voice that usually only held cold amusement.

When she looked back, the minister was lying on the floor in a puddle of blood, Fujimiya looming over him with his katana in hand.

He had made her miss it!

“Why did you do that?” she complained, and way too loud, too, completely forgetting where she was and what she was supposed to represent. Thankfully, the lobby was empty at this time of the night.

Schuldig appeared at her side in an instant, staring in her eyes. He grabbed her arm. “Let’s go, Mrs Williams.”

She let herself be dragged out with no resistance.

 

Jack paced up and down the work room, his eyes flickering to the screen showing the now empty front lobby of the building where only moments before two figures had been walking past.

“What the hell was that?!” he demanded to know, firmly.

Crawford stood next to him, appearing calmer than he was. “It is known to happen, especially in the beginning,” he said.

“Gwen wouldn’t look away from a murder about to happen!” Jack exclaimed. “That is not the Gwen I know, Crawford! What the hell did you do?”

Crawford turned to face him, up front and crossed his arms, now actually kind of insulted at the insinuation. “This is a perfectly normal response, Captain. I’m sure you must remember what it feels like to kill the first time.”

“She didn’t kill anyone!”

Crawford tilted his head. “Do you think she thinks the same way?”

Jack sighed. Of course she wouldn’t. To Gwen, it wouldn’t matter whether she did the killing herself, or if she made it possible.  
And if he was really honest with himself, it didn’t matter to him, either.

Tonight, Jack had stayed at the base with Crawford, watching over the mission that Gwen was to help accomplish together with Fujimiya and Tsukiyono. Schuldig was just there to watch over her – without her knowing, of course.  
Jack might as well have done the killing himself. They had worked towards this for a week; Jack even having been part of a smaller hit, two nights ago.

He rubbed his face. “Did you know this would happen? What _did_ happen, anyway?”

“I... had my suspicions that she would be having minor troubles, which is why I sent Schuldig along with them.” He paused. “As for the what...”

“She was rationalising,” an entirely too calm voice said behind them. Farfarello just stood there, waiting for the men to acknowledge him, an eerily serene smile on his lips.  
“She knew that she would have to accept the killing in some way, if she wanted to help her pet project.” He nodded towards the back rooms. “So she dehumanised the victim.” The smile widened fractionally. “And she is not entirely wrong about that. There is not much human left in those agents.”

“That is not Gwen,” Jack insisted.

Farfarello just shrugged. “It is now. Happens to the best of us.” He smirked. “She should have a chat with Hidaka.”

Jack frowned. “Ken?” Ken was one of the most balanced people he had ever met, never mind assassins.

Farfarello chuckled and turned to leave, again.

“Captain...” Crawford redirected the Captain’s attention. “You have to realise that even the nicest people would sooner or later suffer the consequences of this line of work.”

“Will she be alright?”

“She will cope.”

Jack looked pained.

“You are aware that she is already damaged in that respect. You are not exactly in the safest business.”

“This is something else,” Jack protested.

“It is.”

Jack’s expression sobered. “And we have no choice.”

Crawford nodded, slowly. “Not if you want to recover your team member.”

Jack’s lips twisted. “And you know I’d do anything to get him back.”

Crawford averted his eyes. “You must know...” He hesitated and tried, again. “You realise that I am no different.”

That stopped Jack’s train of thought in its track, if only for a moment. Crawford might not have had someone to get out, but he had someone to keep out, to keep safe. The team, naturally... but also...  
“Have you ever told him?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That you love him. Have you ever told him?”

Crawford huffed. “He’s a telepath. He doesn’t need words.”

“Neither does an empath,” Jack shot back. “Am I right?”

“Yes.”

Jack swallowed. “Doesn’t make it any better, I can tell you that.”

“I am nothing like you,” Crawford protested.

“I’m not so sure about that.” Jack suddenly seemed very calm and very sure. “I’ve lived for millennia, and you can see them.”

Crawford stared him down, coldly.

“You should tell him while you still can.”

“I will _not_ let him die,” he swore fiercely.

Jack rubbed at his eyes and sniffed, once. “Yeah. I swore myself the same thing.” He laughed, mirthlessly. “And what happened? Ianto is stuck in some alien machine that is running the minds of God knows how many telepaths through him.”

Crawford knew how it felt to see people trapped in the machinery that was Rosenkreuz. And he knew way more about the amplifiers than he had told the Captain. However, he operated on a need to know basis, and Captain Jack Harkness didn’t need to know everything. Even though Crawford was reasonably sure that Jones would be alright.  


“With his dying breath he told me that he loves me, and I couldn’t reply because I somehow thought that the loss would hurt more if I did. I was wrong.”  
Jack swivelled around and left. He didn’t want to deal with someone who wouldn’t listen to him, anyway, while at the same time reminding him of his own failure.

He slammed the heavy metal door of his room behind himself.

He would get Ianto back. He would. Or else he would find a way to die this time. Couldn’t be that damn hard, could it? And if even the doctor couldn’t find a way, maybe there was a solution at that godforsaken institute.

On top of the mission, he would have to be really careful that the anger and grief didn’t make him a murdering monster, again. Especially, now that it would have been so easy to just lash out and go killing with the rest of the team.  
He would have been good at it, too... and it would have made him feel good. None of that greater good crap that made him kill his little boy, his Stephen, no matter how many children survived because of that.

He sat down on his bed and allowed himself to just wallow in the possibility of being in at least in a situation in which he could theoretically go berserk. The thought couldn’t hurt, could it?

 

He heard through the door when the team brought Gwen back, but he couldn’t go out there and tell her that things would turn back to normal, that the strange urge to watch someone die – to maybe even do the killing yourself – would go away. That she would be okay.

How could he tell her that, if he didn’t know it was true? Didn’t even know if he could make it happen for himself?

 

He must have dozed off, because the next thing he knew was that he was still sitting on his bed, his head drooping...

And when he blinked, he stared into a pale, one-eyed face.

He gave himself a whole bunch of bonus points for not jerking out of his skin. He just rubbed his face and scowled at the Irish man sitting in front of him with folded legs.

“What the hell do you want? And how did you get in?”

Farfarello smiled at him and tilted his head. “Master key. I know where it is, they used to lock me in.”

“Wonder why,” Jack replied drily.

Farfarello chuckled. “You’re having some sort of breakdown, Captain?”

Jack shifted towards the headboard.

“You’re quite normal, you know,” Farfarello went on.

Jack snorted. “Well, if you say so...”

“So easy to say, isn’t it,” Farfarello said calmly. “He’s insane, no need to take him seriously.”

Jack actually looked properly chastised for a moment. “Look...”

Farfarello just laughed. “You are under the impression that I care about what you think of me. Let me assure you that I do not. I do however know one thing.” His one, amber eye stared down the Captain. “I know that we will need you. I know that we will need her. As well as your friend and the boy.”

Jack stared at him, confused. “How do you know all that? From what I gather, you’re not psychic.”

Farfarello shrugged. “I know things; I don’t see them, like Schuldig and Crawford. I can’t move things like Nagi, but they sometimes lose relevance...” His voice drifted off at the end of the sentence as well as his eye. After a moment, the eye darted back. “And I believe Crawford already informed you that I appear to be a disturbance in time and space.”

“You shouldn’t even exist!” Jack insisted. “Psychics I understand. I’ve met clairvoyants, telepaths and telekinetics in a number of species, including the human one. I have...” he pointed at Farfarello for emphasis, “ _no_ idea what you are.”

“Maybe I don’t exist, then.”

“Oh don’t! I’m not awake enough for this.”

Farfarello chuckled, now clearly amused. “The reason I came...”

“What? You mean you’re actually going to tell me?”

“Is that I already spoke to the woman, and she seemed to believe me that she is not going to end up as the next me.”

“You spoke to Gwen,” Jack said, deadpan, and it wasn’t even a question.

“I did. It appears that the broken are drawn to me.” He gave a tiny shrug. “She will be assigned to Hidaka, from now on. He was at the point she is, before, and beyond that. He will know how to lead her through it.”

Jack looked at him for a while. “You’re not going to assign Hidaka to me, though, are you?”

“I am afraid it will be something you have to work through for yourself. You are a killer. You have been for a while.”

Jack swallowed.

“You will be a killer again. You will even take pleasure in erasing the evil you face.” Farfarello watched Jack calmly. “And you will realise that you are not a bad man for it.”  
He gave an odd little giggle. “Though that last part might take you a while.”

With that, the Irish man unfolded his legs and stood, heading towards the door without another word.

Jack didn’t move from where he was sitting. “What are you?”

Farfarello looked at him over his shoulder. “That is something I do not know. I only know that _He_ made me a murdering weapon, and I hope He weeps for what He makes me do, because I will not.”

He closed the door behind him and left Jack alone.

And for the first time, Jack wasn’t so sure if Farfarello was human, at all, but for the life of him he didn’t know what the other man could possibly be.

But the Irish man was right. Whatever kind of God made him what he was, was hopefully suffering for it.

 

The next morning, Jack found Gwen in the kitchen, unsurprisingly talking to Ken. For a few minutes, he allowed himself to wait around the corner and just listen to them. He still didn’t think that he was in a position to be the rock for her he should have been, so he thought it better to assess the situation, first.

Their conversation was in full speed.

Gwen was no doubt articulating herself with hands and feet, according to the sound of her voice. “Well, that was to be expected. I would have ripped him to pieces!” And at least a part of her meant that literally; the same part that knew that Ken did – while not rip – cut the person to pieces.  
“I mean... you know what I mean.” She laughed, nervously.

“Yeah...” Ken sounded embarrassed. “People die all the time. We just can’t ever forget why the people we kill have to die.”

“To save others,” Gwen said quietly.

A sigh. “Yes. We still kill, though.” A nervous chuckle. “It’s a tightrope kinda thing. Just make sure you speak to one of us if it gets too much? Or if you think you might either lose yourself in what we do or freak out on a mission.” The last part sounded very serious.

“I think...” She swallowed. “I think the second would be inadvisable, right now.”

“It is. We could always work through the first, later. There might not be a later if you...”

“If I bollocks it up.”

Jack smiled a bit and turned around the corner. “Good morning!”

Gwen’s face lit up, right away. “Well, look who’s up. Are you alright?”

Jack headed for the coffee and tried to shrug it off. “Yeah... some things just hit me, yesterday.” He poured the coffee, got caught up in another memory for a second, and then turned around, again. “I think I’m done with the freakout.”

Ken tilted his head, eerily like Farfarello in some way, only friendlier. “Good to hear.”

Jack smiled back, but there was a tense determination present that he had to rebuild again in his new situation. He was almost pleased that he had found it, now. He would be needing it, no doubt.  
“We are getting Ianto back, and we will shut down the institute.”

 

There was a loud bang outside the kitchen and someone swearing, right before Schuldig came storming in.  
“That’s nice,” he gasped, out of breath. “Move your asses; get out; use the staircase not the elevator. And no telepathy for the time being.”

They froze for a moment.

“MOVE!”

 

They moved.

Gwen didn’t even realise how she got into the stairway, she got grabbed and pushed, and her police training kicked in and kept her running.

She heard steps above and none below, but she couldn’t make out who was ahead of them.  
It took her three floors, until she remembered the boy. “Where is Griffin?” she gasped.

Schuldig just grabbed her arm and urged her to go faster. “If you think we’ll let that little weasel here to be captured with all he knows, you’ve got another thing coming.”

Gwen didn’t have a choice but to accept that.

Then she heard the front door at the bottom slam, again, and Schuldig yelled down: “Move it, kids!”

“We’re coming!” came Omi’s voice, two sets of feet starting to run up.

Ten floors. Four to go.

The air burned Gwen’s lungs, but a quick glance at the fierce look on the telepath’s face left no doubt in her that slowing down was not an option.

Four floors up, and they burst out of the door, standing in the garage. “Hidaka, take her! Captain, with me!”

Nobody questioned him. Not even Gwen, who without hesitation ran with Ken and left Jack and Schuldig behind by the door.

“What are we doing?” Jack asked, breathing hard.

“Waiting for the kids.” Schuldig held the door open, and Omi and Nagi were just a landing down. “Grab Omi’s backpack, I take Nagi’s.”

The moment the teenagers came running through the door, they were already taking off their burden. And Jack was immediately impressed by the weight they had carried up all those flights of stairs for fourteen floors.

The four of them headed in a different direction than Gwen and Ken had.

Outside the building, a hassled looking Aya Fujimiya waited for them beside a black van with tinted windows.

“In the back!” he yelled at them, already getting behind the wheel.

The tires of the van were screeching before the door was even properly closed and they were rushing away into the early morning...

 

... And then the deafening blow came.


	9. Footing

Gwen sat sideways in the back next to Griffin, and the van she was in managed to come to a screeching halt around a corner when the explosion came.

“Oh, god. Earthquake.”

“More like explosion,” Ken gritted out, sitting facing Gwen. “What the hell happened, Crawford?”

Crawford waited a few seconds, watching the wave of dust through the rear view mirror. “I expected this. I just didn’t know when it would happen.”

Gwen pulled her hair back into a pony tail. “Well, aren’t we glad you saw this coming, then.”

Crawford bent over the backrest. “Indeed. We’d be dead if I hadn’t.”

“Then why the hell didn’t you see it coming, earlier?”

Crawford sighed. This was the last time he would get any non-psychics on his team. On the other hand, it wasn’t like he had never sworn himself this before. Maybe this time, he would listen to himself...  
“I am an exceptional precog, but my premonitions can be avoided.”

Ken leaned towards Gwen when Crawford turned back around to get the car going. “He means that if they have enough time, they can find a chain of events that leads around the events he can foresee.”

Gwen looked from Griffin who looked rattled but kept quiet and back to Ken. “But he did see it.”

Ken nodded. “It was a matter of time for them to find such a chain, but like he said, he’s the best one there is, so he prepared for it.”

“More immediate problem, Crawford,” Farfarello gritted out from the passenger seat.

Crawford kept his eyes on the road. “I realise that. Hidaka!”

Ken blinked, once. “Shit!” He got up, crouched in front of his seat and opened it. He took out a small box with syringes in it.  
Quickly he injected one of them into the Irish man’s neck. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

Farfarello didn’t take notice of him and kept his attention on Crawford. “You better make sure you find a better solution. Can’t keep me sedated forever, mate. Not if you want me in the field.”  
His amber eye got droopy and his head tilted. He passed out.

Ken stowed away the syringe and sat down.

Gwen stared at him, feeling distinctly uncomfortable. To her, Farfarello seemed like such a calm if eerie personality, most of the time, and while she had heard what the man did when he was being _'let out to play'_ as Schuldig put it, she never got to see it.  
Being reminded that he was also a man who had to be heavily medicated or knocked out cold was... She shuddered.

Ken leaned his head back and eyed the relaxed face of Farfarello on the other side up front. “Since he’s down for the count, would you mind telling me what’s been going on with him, Brad?”

Gwen blinked. Ken never called Crawford Brad. Him using the first name, now, was like a sign that he would accept neither nonsense nor excuses.

Crawford kept his eyes firmly on the road; there was a deep crease between his eyes. He gave Ken a whole bunch of bonus points for A realising it and B actually waiting with his question. “I can’t trace his future,” he evaded. Nothing Ken didn’t know, but he wasn’t sure there was anything else he could tell him that made sense.

“Cut it out, Crawford!” Ken yelled. He was obviously not in the mood for Crawford’s cryptic side.  
Ken had an odd relationship with the Irish man. They used to be enemies – getting up against each other several times, and Ken still had the scars to prove it – and now they were team mates, much more alike in some respects than Ken would have liked. They were friends, even. In some... not really reciprocal way.  
“I know you know something. Now tell me what the fuck it is!”

Griffin lifted his head. “His non-future is ending.”

“What?” Ken almost squeaked.

“More like non-existence,” Crawford spat out, gritting his steering wheel. “It’s like the Captain said. He is a blank spot in time and space. He shouldn’t exist. He... _can’t_ exist. Which is why I can’t make out his future, nor can any other precog.”

Gwen looked at the side Crawford’s face. “And he’s... dying?”

Crawford shook his head. “No, just the anomaly. It’s probably circular, and the circle ends... or... begins. I don’t know what it means, but Farfarello must know on some level that whatever it is, it’s happening, and soon.”

Gwen shuddered. “Not sure I like the idea of something happening that you can’t foresee.”

Crawford chuckled. “Got used to the advantage, fast, didn’t you?”

Gwen shrugged. “Kind of. But that’s not it. Not seeing things coming is one thing, but you’re supposed to see them. So, if you don’t, there’s something wrong.”

Crawford allowed that with a tilt of his head. “I only watch time, you’re the one who knows how it can be manipulated, aren’t you?”

Gwen bit her thumb nail. “I’ve seen it happen, yes.”

Ken looked at her. “Maybe that’s why you’re not afraid of him. You and Jack. You recognise what he is.”

Crawford’s brown eyes remained on the morning traffic, but Ken had once more just found a puzzle piece.

“But I don’t,” Gwen protested. “I have no idea who or what he is.”

“You don’t fear him,” Griffin repeated. “You know what he is capable of, and yet you were never afraid of him.”

Gwen blinked. It was kind of odd, now that they mentioned it. It was scary to hear the story about what Farfarello had done and the way he was doing those things... It was scary to hear, but she wasn’t afraid of the man himself.  
“I don’t,” she said, the realisation only just really sinking in. “But that’s...”

“And he knew,” Crawford said controlled. “He knew!” He hit the steering wheel with his flat hands since they were in front of a red light.

Farfarello slept on, his face relaxed. Except for the small smile that shouldn’t have been there with the sedative running through his system.

 

*

Jack helped the boys unpack what they had in their backpacks. “Just how many hard drives are there?”

Nagi gave him a smile. “All of them. We couldn’t leave them behind.”

Omi groaned when he saw another small figure rush through the shadows. “And it’s back to this. Perfect.”

Jack chuckled at the rat hiding from its new neighbours. “Just how long are we going to stay here?”

Schuldig who stood in a corner with his arms as crossed as his mood, bit out: “For as long as it takes for it to be safe to re-group.”

“And how are we going to know when that’ll be without telepathy?” Jack wanted to know while he watched the boys hook up some of the hard drives to the tiny and only laptop they had with them.

Schuldig didn’t answer him, nor did he pay him any attention, but the boys’ eyes lit up, and Omi released an audible breath.

That seemed to interest Schuldig. “Do you still have it?”

The boys nodded, and Omi said: “Yes. We still have it.” He turned to Jack. “We were getting really close to the base with what we got from the minister.”

“How close?”

“About one step away, I’d say,” Schuldig answered. “He knew a bit more than he should have. Not enough to actually locate the base, but close enough that we can use satellites to scan for it with what we know already.”

Jack looked amused. “And you of course won’t be having problems hacking into a satellite system.”

Omi just looked smug. “Which one would you like?”

Jack laughed.

“But not with that equipment,” Nagi added, sombrely. “That little thing is only useful for the most basic work.”

Jack didn’t even want to know what _the most basic work_ was to two people like them.

“Having all the information we’d get from any kind of satellite system run through it is not possible. We’ll need some better computers.”

“Then we’ll go shopping,” Youji drawled lazily from where he was standing in the doorframe.

Jack immediately straightened. “Can I come? I need to get out.”

Youji nodded. “Sure thing, handsome, but we’ll need one of the kids.”

Omi and Nagi shared a quick look and Nagi stood. “I’ll come.”

Youji just nodded as if he’d been expecting that answer, and Jack had the distinct feeling that he was missing something.

Just before they closed the door behind themselves, the lights went on in some parts of the cold building. It looked like Aya had taken care of the fuse in the basement.

“Thank God!” Youji exclaimed. “That’s one thing, at least.”

 

Aya only took one look at Schuldig when he came back into the room and immediately stepped up to him. He had expected the man to react somewhat volatile to their new situation, and he was proven right.

The German was currently trying very hard to dampen the telepathy that was always running through him like a stream. He didn’t like having to suppress it; he didn’t like not being allowed to use it; he didn’t like not knowing how long this would take; and he most certainly didn’t like that Crawford wasn’t there.

But Aya knew that there was one thing the man hated even more and that was being vulnerable and dependent, and right now, he was both.  
Schuldig didn’t react well to offers of help at the best of times, and this was quite possibly one of the worst.

Aya stopped right in front of him and outright ordered: “You’re coming with me. You need some more self-control.”

Schuldig scowled at him but followed without another word and into another room.

Aya picked up two katana and threw one to Schuldig to catch. “My guess would be that mental training won’t be enough, today, will it?” A small smirk pulled at his lips. He quite liked having Schuldig as an opponent; the man was a decent enough swordsman, even if he preferred fire weapons, and he was as quick with his body as he was with his mind.

Schuldig answered with a smirk of his own and unsheathed the sword. “Give it your best shot, Fujimiya.”

 

A while after their ‘shopping’ trip, Youji went looking for Jack and found him on the top floor. He almost missed the figure standing by the window unmoving and was about to head for the roof, but something made him look twice.

Jack had apparently heard him and asked without turning around. “Are the kids busy with setting up the equipment?”

Youji came to a halt next to him and mirrored his stance, looking out. He thought that maybe the Captain appreciated the distance.  
“Yeah. I think they can re-start the scanning by morning.”

Jack nodded.

“We’ll get him out, you know,” Youji suddenly added, after a moment of silence, venturing a wild guess on what the man was thinking about. Ianto Jones was generally a good guess, Youji had discovered.

“I have to. I have to get him out or...” He shuddered a breath. “Have to.”  
He would have to kill him if he couldn’t get him out. He knew that. Knew that Ianto would have wanted it that way. It made his stomach churn and his head spin.

Youji decided not to make any more promises that he might not be able to keep and just said, “He is awfully cute.”

That startled a laugh out of Jack. “He is.” He smiled. “And he makes good coffee, too.”

“A keeper, then?” Youji smiled.

Jack nodded, the smile slowly fading. “And he was just... beginning to live, again, you know.” He swallowed. “For a while I thought we’d lose him, he was so broken. Which, by the way, was partially my fault, too.” He rubbed his nose. “Then we hit it off, and he just came alive, again. He really got into the job, too. He stopped just taking orders and started showing what he was capable of...” His voice faded away.

Youji let the man talk, he obviously needed it.

“And then I... was fucking stupid enough to take him with me. I had no plan except for telling that alien that we wouldn’t play along.” He looked at Youji like he couldn’t believe he had done that. “I can’t die, you know, but he can. And I just thought that the alien would shrug and say, _‘Oh, well, worth a try, bye now’_ or something? It killed a building full of people, because I thought nothing would happen when I challenge a murderous alien.” He breathed harshly, by now. “How fucking stupid was that?!”

Youji tilted his head. “Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, no,” Youji agreed, thoughtful.

Jack took a breath to reply, but froze before he could say anything. He stared at his new friend. “You think I was being manipulated?”

Youji shrugged. “Think about it. They wanted Ianto, right? And they got him with that virus...” His eyes held the Captain’s. “See, not even Schu and Brad know what happened. And it does make sense, because I can’t for the life of me explain how you would have done something like that...” He frowned at that last part.

“They wanted Ianto and me out of the way, in whatever way possible,” Jack concluded.

“It certainly appears that way.” He reconstructed what Jack had told him. “You really just went there to tell the alien that you wouldn’t comply?” he asked, incredulous.

Jack nodded.

“And no other plan?”

Jack gave another nod that turned into a shake of his head, quickly. “That’s insane.”

“Agreed. You should tell Schu about it.”

Jack leaned his forehead against the cool glass. “What if there is more?” he asked, quietly.

“Oh, there probably is,” Youji immediately said. “The one thing you learn when dealing with paranormals.” He smiled, ruefully.

Jack snorted.

“Just stick to Brad.”

“Who is not here,” Jack interrupted.

Youji chuckled. “Who is not here, _at the moment_ , which is why you should tell Schu, for a start.”

Jack shook his head, which looked odd, what with him still leaning against the window. “How do you deal with working with them?”

“I go with the flow,” he grinned and winked at Jack when the other man tilted his head to look at him.  
“Easier that way, trust me.”

“What if he’s wrong, one day?”

Youji sighed, deeply and somewhat amusedly. “Then we’ll be dead a lot later than we would have been without him.”

Jack straightened. “Fair enough.” He mentally shook himself and thought that enough was enough. “Let’s head back down.”

Youji bowed, comically. “Let’s.”

 

They were back in the main room they had conquered for themselves and cleaned up enough to survive to see Aya and Schuldig exiting their appointed training room. They were both sweating and breathing hard, but they also looked incredibly satisfied.

Youji smirked at them. “Wait until I tell Crawford about that.”

Schuldig flipped him the bird, feeling too pleasantly knackered to care. “Aya could teach him some new moves,” he said, instead.  
He left the room without another glance. “There is still water in this shit hole, right?” he yelled over his shoulder, not really expecting an answer. The kids were as keen on being clean as he was and would have made sure that they had that, at least.

 

*

Gwen was huddled in the corner on the floor, watching the sleeping figure of Farfarello on the old army bed. The man had begun to shift, and Gwen hoped that he wouldn’t get out of straightjacket and restraints too fast for her to get out if necessary.

Then the amber eye opened and appeared to almost glow in the dimness of the room for a moment. But Gwen blinked and it was gone. She might not have been really afraid of the man, but he still creeped her out.

She stood and slowly closed in on the bed. She hardly dared to breathe.

Farfarello’s one eye flickered to her. After a moment of staring, his whole body jerked, making the metal bed frame screech on the floor and Gwen jump and almost run for the door. He wound from side to side, until his lost mind realised that he wouldn’t be getting out of his restraints, immediately.

Gwen froze, breathing hard, still somewhat in shock, but since Farfarello didn’t appear to try and flee, she stayed. Just in case, however, she calculated the time it would take her to get out of the door and lock it in her mind.  
“We’re in France.” She stepped closer, again, raising both her hands a bit. “Do you... need anything?”

“I would not come closer if I were you,” he said, calmly. “You should know that I can get out of this, should I wish to.” His eye did that weird glowing thing, again. “And I will paint the walls of this room with the blood you offer, and gladly.”

The almost ecstatic expression on Farfarello’s face at the mention of blood was certainly disturbing, Gwen thought, but... “You won’t hurt me.”

Farfarello jerked at his bindings, again, yelling. Her words rang true. He didn’t quite understand why they did, but they did.  
“But I _want_ to!” he shouted at the top of his voice, fighting himself and the restraints and...

He fell back onto the bed and gasped. “She knows you.”

Gwen blinked. “What?”

He breathed, harshly and stared at her, deeply _into_ her. “She knows you. And the Captain.” He growled. “She knows the Captain well.”

Who was she, and how did she know Jack?  
If someone at Rosenkreuz already knew Jack well, they were running into a trap! They would be expected…

 _Now_ she was scared. Not of the man, himself, but that look and the words to go with it were not something she could rationally take. It felt all kinds of wrong.  
She inched closer to the door backwards, blindly reaching for the handle.  
“Uhm. Ken and Griffin are out to get meds for you. They’ll...” her fingers hit the wall, and she quickly turned to see where she could open the door. “They’ll be back soon. You’ll be fine,” she added, hurriedly and slipped out, making sure the lock clicked behind her.

Once outside, she leaned against the door and tried to shake off the feeling of dread that conversation had woken in her. She had no idea who _‘she’_ was, but it didn’t sound good...

Someone cleared his throat, and she nearly jumped out of her skin, again.

Crawford.

She breathed out.

“What did he say?”

Gwen blinked, adjusting the words Farfarello had said to something that made enough sense to explain it to the American. Finally, she shrugged. “Just that... _she_ knows Jack and me.”

“She?”

Gwen shook her head. “I have no idea what he was talking about, but... it feels wrong.”

Crawford tilted his head. “He is certifiably insane. This was just the first time you really saw it.”

“No,” she protested. “That’s not it. You know...” she waved her arms, “him saying that he would paint the walls with my blood sounds insane. I can handle _insane_. I cannot handle rational statements that make no sense!”

Crawford had to smirk at that.

“It’s not funny. Whoever _she_ is, it didn’t sound good. It’s just... wrong.” Wrong was the only word that fit, somehow. Wrong.

“Hm. He never mentioned a woman, before.” His voice drifted off. “Interesting.”


	10. Motion

Schuldig had only just managed to fall into a pleasant doze after his cold-ish shower when the door banged open.

Nagi was standing with the light in his back, breathing heavily. “You have to come see this.” He darted off before he even finished the last word.

Schuldig groaned when the dark figure disappeared from his door frame and rolled to his side, rubbing his face. “Perfect.” That was the last thing they needed, any more complications while the team was ripped in two pieces and their team precog was not with them and nobody was allowed to contact anyone, either.  
From the way Nagi had just acted, the complications would have to have been quite something. Schuldig was sure that the boy would have fidgeted nervously had he not run off, again, right away. Nagi had a poker face if he ever saw one in somebody so young, so whenever that wavered, there was trouble.

Trouble without Brad. Some shreds of the restless dream he’d had before he was woken still clung to him. He didn’t remember exactly what had happened in it, but Brad was there, and he wanted to curl up and go back to sleep. The fact that he had thought that it was a gunshot that woke him, at first, didn’t help one bit, and dread settled in his stomach.

He shook his head and stumbled out of the room. He found Jack and Youji pacing in the room, both with thoughtful frowns on their faces, the kids on their equipment, fingers flying over the keyboards and Aya standing solemnly and unmoving.

Omi stood, immediately, leaving his spot to Nagi. He approached Schuldig. “I think we found the Rosenkreuz base.”

Schuldig shrugged. “So? We’re not going there, alone.” Right now, the base was the last thing on his mind.

“We’re not,” Omi agreed. “But that political network in England?”

Schuldig blinked.

“One of the next targets followed us here.”

Schuldig’s expression froze. “Followed?”

“Followed, as in, he left the country after us, coming to this city.”

“Are you telling me, we are being rounded up by a team with a capable enough precog to pinpoint us, while our own precog is not here?”

“Not just the precog,” Youji added.

Schuldig squeezed his eyes shut. He had been right, before. Perfect. “Farf is not here.”

Jack walked around to look at the computer screen. “We have the location, but we can’t tell the others. They can’t be found, but we can. Splitting up was a pretty stupid idea.”

Schuldig shared a quick look with Aya. _Focus_... This was not the time to freak out. He might not have been the precog nor the best strategist ever, but he did have the training for the latter, at least. He made a quick decision.  
“Where is the base?”

Omi stared at him, wide-eyed. “We’re not going there, alone, are we?”

Schuldig waved him off. “That would be a guaranteed suicide mission instead of mere lunacy with the whole team.” Time to take over. Crawford had always warned him that something like this could happen, at some point.  
“Location?”

Omi fidgeted. “Switzerland.”

“We already knew that,” Schuldig urged him on, impatiently.

“San Gottardo pass. On the pass.”

“How did you find it?” Jack wanted to know.

Nagi cleared his throat. “We had an approximate, and then we tracked an... unusual delivery.”

Jack wasn’t sure he wanted to know what had been delivered.

“They disguised it as a congress centre and hotel,” Nagi added. “They probably let people use it as that as well, to make sure. The facilities appear to be underground.”

Schuldig was busy keeping his telepathy under control while his mind took various turns and twists. Finally, his eyes landed on Jack.  
“Well, Captain? We seem to be running out of options.”

Jack returned the look. It was clear that Schuldig had automatically taken the lead, and he was kind of glad that his opinion still held some kind of merit for the German. Jack was as much a leading personality as Crawford was.  
“Doesn’t look like we can do anything but take out our pursuer, right now.”

“That would have been my estimate,” Schuldig agreed, nodding.

Aya moved from where he was leaning against the wall. “Crawford said no telepathy.” He was not going to let those two take over the team without having his say in it. “And there is no way I’m letting you do this without it.”

Youji groaned. “Three leaders. Great. Just what we needed.” He didn’t know whether he should be amused or terrified at this, but he definitely preferred decisive action to sitting in a dark hole waiting.

Schuldig just smirked. “Since we appear to agree, this won’t be a problem.”

Omi rubbed his face and Nagi swallowed. The younger said: “We’re going to go against Crawford’s explicit orders,” it was not a question, nor really a statement, more like Nagi repeating what the others were implying.

Jack huffed and crossed his arms. “Well, if he wanted us to stick to his orders, he should have made sure that we even have that option.” He looked at all of the men in turn. “Well, we don’t.”

“I agree,” Aya said, coolly. “We can’t risk contacting the others while we are being followed, and we can’t tell them that we have the location. We have to take out the agents on our trail.”

All of them nodded in agreement, even if the kids were a bit more reluctant about it.

Schuldig turned to Nagi and Omi, again. “You say one of the politicians is after us?”  
Omi nodded. “I caught him on a flight. I don’t know if he allowed us to catch him or if he thought he’d slip through.”

“Fake ID?”

Omi nodded, again. “Of course. He’s not that stupid.”

“And he’s also not alone.”

This time, Omi shook his head and bit his lip. “He might have a higher-up with him. A woman.” He peeked at Schuldig from a downturned face.

Schuldig sighed. “The Duchess?”

Youji narrowed his eyes. “That rings an unpleasant bell...” Though he wasn’t quite sure where he’d heard the code-name before.

Jack looked from one to the other. “Explain.”

Aya didn’t remember where he’d heard about her, either, but whoever she was, she certainly had an impact on Schuldig.

The German stood with his arms crossed. “Assuming that it is her; this shit just got real.” He snorted.

Jack rolled his eyes. “Let me guess, you always wanted to say that.”

Schuldig grinned. “Been waiting patiently for years.” Then he sobered and shook his head. “She’s one of the Rosenkreuz elders. Telepath. Freaky as fuck. If she’s accompanying a low ranking paranormal to Austria...”

The penny dropped with Aya, in that moment. “Is she the one who got out of the fall of the museum?”

Unconsciously, Schuldig’s hand had wandered to his mouth and he was nibbling on his thumb nail, until he noticed it and snapped his hand back down. “Yeah. I have no idea how she managed to gloss that over. She’s a telepath, yet she somehow foresaw what would happen and conveniently failed to attend the ceremony.”

Youji raised a sardonic eyebrow. “Coincidence?”

Schuldig snorted. “There’s no such thing.”

Nagi’s quiet voice piped up. “I don’t get how she sold the story to the other elders.”

Youji tilted his head. “Let me get this straight. We’re half a team and up against a Rosenkreuz telepath telling the future without a precog of our own?”

“Her premonition might have been a fluke,” Schuldig noted. “I have _hunches_ , too. I doubt her precog abilities are even classified.”

“Suppose we take her out,” Jack began, “how badly would that hit Rosenkreuz?”

“Badly,” said Nagi and Schuldig at the same time, and Schuldig continued: “She’s high ranking for a reason. Taking her out would be tricky...”

“But she’s not on her own ground, and you’re the stronger telepath,” Jack asked for confirmation.

Schuldig nodded. “Theoretically. But if she’s here, knowing that I‘m here, she must think that she has chances of beating me.” He bit his lip. “And... not all of the conditioning is gone,” he forced out. It made him physically ill to even think about the reactions any Rosenkreuz operative still caused within him, much less say it out loud. He just wanted them all gone... but wanting them gone also meant confronting them.

“Oh, don’t be an idiot!” Nagi uncharacteristically burst out. He didn’t even care that everyone was staring at him. “The conditioning is gone, you’re just afraid.” His dark blue eyes stared down the telepath.

“And with good reason,” Schuldig hissed. Conditioning or no, his triggers were more than enough to incapacitate him in the wrong moment. And someone like that woman knew how and when to apply pressure on them...  
Shitshishit. If he didn’t watch himself, he’d panic before long, and he was supposed to lead, he was supposed to kill, he was supposed to succeed.  
Shit. The Duchess.  
He felt dizzy.

Nagi refused to just take that. “Are you going to take her out?”

Schuldig stared at him, not entirely sure if _‘Yes’_ would be the right answer. They both knew what the institute was like. They both knew how hard it was to go against them, once they had let you know what they were capable of. Fear within their own operatives was one of their strongest points.  
Their enemies knew every single weak spot. And they would use each and every one of them. And then some.

“Because we don’t have a choice in this,” Nagi clarified, not backing down. “We either take her out or die, be that now or later. And frankly, I prefer my chances anywhere but in their own base, thank you very much, never mind that she is here now and will probably hunt us down, anyway.”

The sick dread coming off Nagi in waves hit Schuldig despite the block he had on his telepathy, and some part of him wanted to grab the kid, hold him and tell him that they would get through this.  
Schuldig realised that Yes would have been the right answer, after all. “You’re afraid,” he noted, coolly, instead.

“DAMN RIGHT I AM!” the boy screamed, his voice breaking and his eyes watering. He trembled all over and never even noticed that warm arms held him. “So let’s just get this over with and kill the bitch!”

For a long time, in which all people in the room could all but _hear_ their own hearts beat, the two did nothing but stare at each other.

Then, as if a switch had been turned, Schuldig blinked and his expression settled.

Nagi didn’t notice it, was still breathing harshly and hoping with all his might that Schuldig would tell him that all was going to be alright. That they would make it. That before long, they would all be together and would not have to worry about the institute, ever again.  
_‘Please,’_ his eyes said. _‘Please.'_

“Let’s.” Schuldig nodded, once. He turned hard eyes to Omi. “You can stop hovering and tell me where we will find them.”

Youji and Jack almost audibly released their breath.

“Well, hold on there, though guy,” Jack said, nonetheless. “I appreciate your change of heart, but...”

“I’ve worked without Brad, before,” Schuldig interrupted, harshly, all but daring the man to question him. “I can do it, again.” His eyes wandered to Nagi, once more. “And Brad said that we can make it. He has said so for ten years, and his premonitions have never let us down.” He nodded at the boy, again. “If this situation is where his premonitions lead us, it is a situation to get us to our goal.”  
He watched as Nagi visibly felt his reassurance, and he made sure that Omi, Aya and Youji were with him. Omi nodded trustfully, Aya gave him a short nod as well, and Youji smiled crookedly.  
Then he returned his attention to Jack. “Enough?”

Jack shrugged and grinned. “Good enough for me.”

 

*

Gwen sat on her small chair, watching Farfarello slowly beginning to stir. It wasn’t really a gradual waking up; it was more like a shift.

Before the man opened his eyes, Gwen said: “Good morning.”

Farfarello turned his head on the bed that he was still tied onto and opened his eye. “Is it?”

Gwen tilted her head. “Good or morning?” She felt an odd sense of pleasure when talking to Farfarello. It felt like a riddle, a hunt, following the hints of a trail she knew nothing of.

“I expect you are capable of reading a watch, Mrs Williams.”

Gwen’s lip twitched, but she looked at her watch. “Only just.” It was a quarter to noon.

“And is it good?”

“Well... not really, no,” she admitted.

“Ah.” Farfarello relaxed on his bed, not making any efforts to escape. “Are we quite stuck?”

Gwen shrugged. “I think Crawford’s been hit by a premonition, earlier. He tries to make sense of it.”

Farfarello chuckled. “This time, he won’t be able to do anything to intervene.” He looked at her. “We will have to wait and see if everything he’s done so far to lead us to this point will get us beyond it, won’t we.”

“You don’t seem worried,” she noted.

He smiled and didn’t answer.

“Who is she?” she finally asked what she had wanted to ask since she had last spoken to him.

Farfarello’s one eye glinted at her as his smile widened. “She is everywhere. At all times.”

Gwen frowned, confused. “Are you speaking of... God?”

Farfarello cackled, the high pitch giving him the eerie air of a giggling child. “My dear, in my dispute with Him, I have chosen to give Him the face that the people who chose to make Him grand to gain power gave Him.”

Gwen blinked and had to think for a moment. “You mean the church.”

“They use Him as He uses me,” he spat, and for a moment, the madness flared despite the medication.

“But who is _she_?” Gwen asked, again, rightfully assuming that they wouldn’t get far if she allowed the discussion about God.

“She will come for me and take it back.”

Gwen stood from her seat and approached the bed.  
Farfarello wasn’t going to tell her who she was, and she was beginning to think that maybe the man had reasons for not telling her. Possibly not reasons she would understand, but if not even Crawford and Schuldig could see or foresee what Farfarello saw, knew and thought, those reasons might be sound even if nobody understood them.  
“What will she take back?” She finally asked, settling on the edge of the bed.

“I was never supposed to have it.”

Gwen smiled. “Then it’s a good thing that she will come to take it back, right?”

Farfarello returned her look for a moment, looking more puzzled than she had ever seen him, which wasn’t that much, but visible, nonetheless.  
“I... don’t remember.”

Gwen wasn’t really sure what to say to that. She decided on, “You will.”

They didn’t get to discussing whatever they were talking about further, because the door banged open and Crawford purposefully strode inside, while Ken marched right past him and began opening Farfarello’s restraints.

Ken smirked at the man lying on the bed. “You about ready to go?”

“Certainly,” Farfarello confirmed. He was indeed about ready to let some demons out to wreak havoc.

Gwen stood from where she was sitting and looked at Crawford in askance. “What’s going on? Where are we going?”

Crawford crossed his arms. “We are heading for Switzerland. The other team will meet us there, soon.”

Gwen situated herself right in front of the American and copied his stance. “And? What are you hiding?”

“They will have to face a threat on their own. There is nothing any of us can do to help them.”

Gwen’s eyes widened. “Jack is with them.”

“Indeed. As are five other people.”

She ran a hand through her hair. “What do you mean we can’t help them? What will happen?” She was definitely approaching frantic, again, now.

“If we try to contact them by any possible means, they will be detected too fast.”

“Will... will they be alright?”

Crawford looked distinctly uncomfortable. “This is a crossing point in time. Since I can’t influence anybody’s choices, it is not yet certain what will happen. But chances are that they will survive, yes.”

“How big are those chances?” She didn’t trust Crawford at all, and she had no doubt that Jack was not considered as big a part of the team as Crawford’s other team members, not to mention his lover.

“They are at about fifty percent.”

Gwen’s hands shot in front of her mouth.

“You realise... that your friend is immortal. Retrieving him would still be possible in the case of a failure.” His voice shook as he said it. “My team is highly professional, as is Captain Harkness. I have foreseen success over ten years ago. This is the first time that a short-term premonition does not entirely coincide with a long-term one, but I don’t see why we should assume failure.”

Gwen rubbed her moist eyes, sniffed and refused to break down. She took a deep breath. “So we will expect them in Switzerland and make sure we have everything ready, right?”

Crawford nodded.

“We’ll make it,” Ken assured both them and himself. They could make it, he knew it. They’d made it so far, hadn’t they?  
“I’ll go get Griffin.”

Gwen forced herself to keep thinking, rationally. “We do have the meds, this time, right?”

Crawford nodded, again.

“Good,” she said, sounding as busy as she could make herself. “So let’s make sure we’re ready to get Jack, your team and your boyfriend back, shall we.”

She fled the room.

Crawford felt more than saw Farfarello come closer to him. “Any piece of insight or advice would be welcome,” he let the Irish man know without turning around.

“This was all supposed to happen.”

Crawford knew that, but he wasn’t going to get into an argument with the lunatic, now. He just rolled his eyes.

Farfarello smirked. “But I bet you wish you’d done what the Captain told you to do, don’t you?”

Crawford remained standing in the room for several seconds longer after Farfarello had left, until he realised what the man had been talking about. “You rotten Irish bastard,” he murmured into the empty room.  
But damn the man. He was right.


	11. смерть убийцам

The young man kept pacing up and down the small hotel room. One hand ran over his face and through his hair, while the other played with his phone in his pocket.

“Will you _stop_ doing that?!” the other person in the room hissed. Her cold, grey eyes stared him down, all but froze him in the spot.

The man still fidgeted. “Do you... do you even know what you are doing?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Madam, with all due respect, I have seen what that team is capable of.” He continued his pacing. “And I don’t particularly care that you seem to think that you can beat them. There is a reason why your counterparts are afraid of them.”

Her eyes turned colder if that was even possible. “Their team is not complete. Their precog is missing. And I was personally involved in the training of the telepath.” She sniffed. “He is merely a silly and frightened boy. I will have no problems reminding him of his place.”

“I am not part of your cult, nor do I care about it. We are in this for a mutual and beneficial arrangement, and I don’t approve of your attitude, at all. There is no reason for me to even be here.” The last part of the sentence sounded as much frightened as it did petulant or whining.

The woman was not impressed. “I will have no problems reminding you of your place, either, minister.” The monotonous sound of her voice was grating on his nerves, and she knew it. “You are in the position you are in because we put you there. Should you prove to be of no more use to us, you will be replaced, make no mistake.”

He wavered.

“I do not care about your position; it can be taken from you. Do not give me a reason to do so.” She reached for light blue gloves to match her outfit and put them on, slowly.  
“Now, minister, get ready. We are leaving. You are fully capable of working for you money.” She looked down on him. “Which was why you were chosen, after all.”

The young minister suddenly very much regretted ever having followed his father to the shooting range as a child.

*

Jack was in the wrong movie, he just knew it. But at least it was a funny one.  
Well, funny in the action movie kind of way. Where there could be jokes in one moment and dead people in the next.

At this moment, he was just way too amused at Schuldig and Youji’s antics to worry about later. He liked the two men; he liked to work with them; he liked their way to deal with things. They were his kind of men. Easy going, but quick and deadly if it suited them. And oddly loyal.  
As it was, it apparently suited them to cover their fear and insecurity with humour. Another thing that Jack knew well.

Schuldig tilted his head and looked up, shaking his head. “This is like a majorly fucked up James Bond movie.”

Jack snorted. “My thoughts exactly.” His eyes followed Schuldig’s line of sight up to the huge ferris wheel brightening the dark of Vienna with is thousands of colourful lights.

Youji stood next to the other two men and pulled his ever present sun glasses a bit lower on his nose. He smirked up to the lights. “And you’re the Bond girl?” He bumped Schuldig with his shoulder.

Schuldig smirked right back. “Naw, I’m the bad boy. But maybe we’ll find a balloon. Smjert ubijcam, this time?” His morbid childlike enthusiasm was catching.

Youji chuckled. “Dalton? Really, man?”

The two were surprised by Jack who apparently knew what their odd inside jokes were about. “I quite liked his Bond, myself. Uptight and ready to bang it when necessary.” He grinned.

Schuldig tilted his head and smirked at him. “I like the way your mind works. And I’m not even reading it.”

“Maybe you should start that, now,” Youji said, calmly, bringing them back to the situation at hand.

Jack’s smile disappeared and he watched Schuldig from the corner of his eye.

Schuldig hesitated, glance up into the lights. “Fuck, Brad,” he said. He took a deep breath and lifted the block he had on his talent.

Jack flinched at the sudden return of the pressure on his mind; Youji just smirked.

Then Schuldig did one better. He opened up. Wider and wider, until all the people in the amusement park were scuttling around in his mind like ants, flashing like the lights on the ferris wheel...

And one of the lights had an odd metallic sheen to it, it flickered, desperately trying to hide.

Schuldig smirked through half-lidded eyes. “She’s not here, yet. But he is.” He chuckled, darkly. “And right now he doesn’t know who he should be more afraid of. Me or her.”

Jack kept his eyes on Schuldig. “Does he know you’re not alone?”

“Hm...” Schuldig scanned the still flickering light that was still not succeeding to hide from him. “He might have a hunch, but he can’t scan for us, himself.” His smirk widened. “And she cut the contact to him.”

“She’s not here. You’re sure?” Youji pressed.

“Yes, I’m sure!” Schuldig hissed and ignored the hands Youji held up to pacify him. “I’m sure she’s close by, but not in the park, yet. I don’t know why she sent him alone.”

Jack nodded. “Okay. So let’s take him out, right?”

Schuldig’s cheek still twitched, angrily. “This is his location,” he merely said and shoved the information none too gently into the others’ brains. Then he stalked off towards their target.

Youji rubbed his head and grinned, ruefully. He winked at Jack. “Let’s.”

Jack snorted and headed off in the opposite direction. He also really hoped that the migraine would disappear when he needed to be clear headed...

 

“Hello, Andrew.”

Andrew swivelled around, wide-eyed and found himself unable to move, trapped in a piercing green gaze. “How the hell did you do that?” he managed to gasp out. He had checked his premonitions. He had been absolutely sure that he wouldn’t make contact for another half hour!

Schuldig smirked at him. “Did she leave you all alone? Why did she do that, I wonder?” And wonder he did. He also tried not to worry about that too much. There was nothing he could do about it, anyway.

Andrew tried to reach for his gun.

Schuldig just rolled his eyes at him. “Please. As if I’d let you.”

“How did you do that? My premonitions,” he started, again.

Schuldig snorted. “Yes, well. I saw your premonition. I was almost impressed...” He smirked. “But, you see, whoever sent you here apparently didn’t think it was necessary to teach you to shield your premonitions.”

“What are you talking about?”

Schuldig felt like indulging him. It wasn’t like he could tell anyone who didn’t already know. Not that he would be able to tell anyone.  
“It’s like this. Déjà vu theory. The brain stores a new input in the long-term memory of the brain by mistake.”

Andrew blinked.

Schuldig stepped closer. “How hard do you think it would be for me to give that hunch of yours a push half an hour into the future?”

Andrew came to the same conclusion that Schuldig had come to, earlier. “She set me up.”

“True.” Schuldig tilted his head. “I should just let you go. Whatever _they_ will do to you will be much worse than what I ever could, anyway.”

Andrew gasped and choked on it. Now he really panicked. Killing was one thing. Even sacrificing other people didn’t faze him much. They were just tools, anyway. He wasn’t a tool! He couldn’t be one! They had made him a politician, had made him successful…  
They had left him hanging.  
“I have information,” he tried desperately.

“Nothing I haven’t cracked out of you, already. And nothing worth the fuss, either.”

“Money. Power. Whatever you want!”

“Darling, if I want money, I can convince whoever I want to give it to me. Power I already have, or you wouldn’t want me to help you.” They were running in pointless circles, and Schuldig knew it. He still tried to go on for as long as possible to find out what the plan was for this little puppet. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.

“I can help...” He certainly didn’t care whom he worked for. He never had. He only cared about the result. And he was quite resourceful, had learned quite some things about the machinations in the institute, even thought he had never seen it, and even though he was hardly a good enough paranormal to even be a blip on the radar.  
He was fucked.

“You’re nothing more than a liability to us,” Schuldig confirmed Andrew’s thoughts calmly. A small part of him actually felt for the other man. There was no way out, and Andrew knew the devil he worked for well. He knew because he was ready to do the same things without question out of mere greed and hunger for power. He knew because he was no better, just less valuable.

At one point, Schuldig himself was no better, only much, much stronger. He had also been strong enough to break free, and now he continued to make the walls that still held part of him captive fall. He would also not stop until he was either dead or the institute destroyed.  
He continued: “Thanks to the efforts of your employers – that you chose to work for, I might add – my team is split and ready to go for a showdown. Not to mention the dozens of kids that will probably die during the process, not that your greedy, asshole heart would care about that.” He briefly wondered when the hell he had started caring about that enough to even mention it.

Andrew’s eyes darkened. “Like you’re one to talk! You’re no better than me!”

“I know more guilt than you ever will.” Schuldig smiled benignly. “And I am most certainly the better operative, the better paranormal and the better assassin.”

“Then why don’t you just kill me?” he asked, a tiny speck of hope flaring up in his eyes. “You need me.”

Schuldig rolled his eyes. “You overestimate your importance. You’re still alive because I want to know why she sent you to be disposed of by us.”

After those words, Andrew stood frozen for another second and… collapsed. He crumbled like a puppet with cut strings.

Schuldig stared at his lifeless body for a long moment before he realised what had happened, and that he couldn’t disconnect his mind from that of the dead man.  
“Shit!” he gasped.  
Distantly, he saw someone running towards him.

“What the hell is going on?!” Jack yelled. “I had my gun on him, but I didn’t...” Then he noticed that something was very wrong with their telepath.  
“Oh, hell. I knew this was too easy.”  
He only just managed to hold the other man up, before his legs would give out.

“Trigger. She had him triggered. I can’t...”

“You’re still linked?” Jack looked around for Aya who was now also running to them. “Aya! Get the kid on the phone!”

“Won’t help,” Schuldig rasped.

“Yes, well, might as well try.” If anyone other than Brad could get Schuldig out of this, it was Nagi.

Aya was already dialling and waiting for half a ring for Nagi to pick up. “We’ve got a problem,” he said, curtly and held the device to Schuldig’s ear.

Nagi didn’t know what was going on, but his reflex made him call out for the telepath, anyway. “Schu?!”

“Here, kid.” God, his vision was all blurry. “Don’t think I can get out of this...” He was dying right along with asshole Andrew. That just sucked.

Jack let Aya hold Schuldig at least sitting upright and hissed into the phone, before anyone could say anything else. “The lights! Take out the lights in two minutes.”

Nagi heard him but choked, anyway. “Schu... no.”

Schuldig felt more than saw Jack get up. “Tell Omi to do so!” he managed to force out, not really knowing why Jack insisted, but trusting the man enough to enforce his plans.

That was when Jack saw a figure approach them. The woman was in no hurry, and she crept along buildings and towards another shadowy corner, before she would undoubtedly come to finish the job.  
Jack thought quickly. He thought it was interesting that she would come here, already and not just wait until it was done.  
“Aya, keep them talking! She’s worried that Nagi can bring him back.” Well, at least he hoped she was…

Then he ran.

“Schu…? You’re not gonna give up, are you? You’re not gonna leave me alone…?” came the small voice over the device held to the German’s ear.

“Not really my choice, kid.” Schuldig could feel the dead mind pulling and pulling, wanting to take him with it.

“Of course it is!” Nagi yelled, hoarsely. “It’s just her trigger, you can beat that!”

Schuldig blinked and looked into worried violet eyes. “Not anymore. I was…” The world was spinning, but at least it was still there and not fading. “… I was stupid enough to go too deep.”

Aya jerked him and made him return his look. “But it’s her trigger, and she’s holding it, right?”

Schuldig felt sweat trickle into his hair. His throat constricted, and he fought another pull. “Yeah…”

Aya nodded. “Hold on.”

“Hold on,” Nagi repeated.

 

The Duchess had her gun straight on Jack, even before he reached her. “You are a hard man to read, Captain.”

Jack just grinned at her gun. “Lady, you have no idea.” She looked like she was maybe fifty years old. Not nearly as old as she undoubtedly was. Then again, neither did he.

“You are not quite of this world, are you?” She mustered him from top to bottom, obviously liking what she saw. “I might have an interesting proposition for you...”

Jack laughed at her. “Yeah. The same you gave Andrew? Or the one you gave the 456?”

Her eyes widened momentarily at this, but caught herself, quickly. “You must be Torchwood, then,” she concluded. “You didn’t fare too well, last time.”

“Neither did you,” he shot back, pushing a very clear mental _‘fuck you very much’_ at her.

“Charming,” she replied. “We will have our chance, again, very soon. Are you certain you do not wish to join forces with the party that knows what it’s doing?”

Jack shrugged. “Not knowing what I’m doing never stopped me, before. And we haven’t lost, yet.”

“You realise that I will not let you stop me. You…” she nodded at him, her nose upturned, “are of no value to me, and I will kill the Mastermind with my gun if I have to, even if it is less satisfying than to squish his mind with mine.”

Jack tilted his head and smirked. “Or maybe because you know that he’s stronger than you and either would kill you first or just pull you along with him if you enter his thoughts?” He chuckled. “ _You’re_ not that hard to read.”  
Half a minute left. _‘Better be prepared for pain, Jack...’_

And the pain came when she pulled the trigger, anger flaring furiously behind her crisp eyes. “You won’t be reading anyone, anymore.”

She slowly approached the two men crouching on the ground, narrowing her eyes. The Mastermind was still alive and able to talk, it seemed. Well, no matter. She would just finish this.  
She raised her gun and aimed.

Her shot ran wild in the sudden darkness.

The second shot hit her from behind, leaving only Jack standing.

*

Gwen firmly grasped the steering wheel and tried to keep her mind on the road. Only few cars passed them, and the road was sparsely lightened.  
Every now and then, she would peek into her rear-view mirror, the silent gaze of Farfarello always staring back, no matter when she looked. Ken leaned his face against the window and gazed out. Griffin had fallen asleep.

Gwen had no idea what Crawford was doing. His eyes were open but had lost all focus.

Every passing minute made her more nervous. There had to be something Crawford could see, at some point. That turning point or whatever the hell it was had to be over, sometime, didn’t it? Points were small units of time; they didn’t stretch for hours on end!

Her eyes flickered to Farfarello, again, who smiled at her, this time…

 

… And Crawford suddenly jerked wildly in the passenger seat and was very glad he had let Gwen drive.

Gwen screamed “What?!” anyway and pulled over, the tires screeching. She grabbed Crawford by the shoulder. “What the hell just happened?”

Crawford grinned, widely.

Ken watched Crawford for all of one second. “Fuck, yeah!” he yelled. “Told you they’d make it, man!” He punched the roof of the car, hard. “Yes!”

Gwen dared to smile, tentatively. “Yes?” she asked Crawford, just to make sure.

Crawford nodded. “Let’s get going.”

*

Somewhere else, somebody else also knew that the Duchess was dead.

She had been a very permanent presence, aimlessly floating or clearly coursing through his mind that he hadn’t had any control over for much too long.

Never before had she been completely gone. She had used him to gather others’ minds, to control them, lead them, direct them. She had used him to find people all over the world, and then she had used him to multiply the pain she wanted to inflict on them. And all he could do was float along and let the streams run through him.

Now, he could also feel the other presences responding to the missing telepathic leader. They were not as strong as she had been, did not draw in others, but their confused and unguided talent pierced him from all directions.

And for the first time in four years, he opened his eyes, unable to process what was around him, unable to think for himself, unable to understand what had happened or why it hurt, but now knowing somehow that he still _was_. He was… someone.

Because right before the woman had vanished, he could feel something.  
He had felt how she wanted to use him, again, to read that person. She wanted to crack an exterior to a core that he just _knew_ he couldn’t let her reach.  
He did not know what he did, nor did he know how he could gather that _something_ from the emptiness that his world had become. What he did, however, was stop her from using him, just this once. Just this once.

Unheard in the empty room in which his body floated surrounded by an energy field, he opened his mouth without having to think about it.  
His voice was harsh and his throat dry, but one word could break free.

“Jack.”


	12. Constellation

Schuldig had his arms full of a trembling Nagi the moment he entered their hideout. He let the young man get the reassurance he needed at that moment, even returned the hug.  
Then he looked over Nagi’s shoulder. “Ready to leave?” he asked Omi.

Omi nodded.

Nagi took a deep breath and swallowed. “Don’t do that, again, please?” he couldn’t hold himself back from pleading, even though he knew Schuldig could promise no such thing, not with what they planned on doing. More could and probably would happen. More and potentially worse.

Schuldig felt unreasonably affectionate at that moment. “I won’t,” he promised, almost meaning it. “Their highest ranking telepath is gone. That should count for something.”

Nagi laughed a little. “Liar.”

“Oh, damn, you got me.” He pushed the boy an arm’s length away and winked at him. “She’s still dead, though.”

Youji snorted. “Yeah,” he said, cheerfully. “There’s just a whole building of instructors and students left. Piece of cake.”

“Aw!” Jack shoved him, playfully. “You’re just bitter you didn’t get to play hero, earlier.”

“Oh, yes. I always wanted to get shot _dead_.” That was something he could have gone without ever seeing, though it was fascinating, in a weirdly morbid way.

Jack smirked.

“Enough playing around,” Aya interrupted the two men before they could get into it. “We’re leaving. Now. There’s a dead body in an amusement park with our name on it.”

When leaving the room, Youji leaned closer to Jack. “Fun and games aside, this is gonna be near impossible.”

Jack silently had to agree. What he said out loud, however, was, “Why is that damn Doctor never around when I need him?”  
He ignored the curious stares he got from the ones who managed to catch his words, but the bitterness creeping up from deep inside him squeezed his throat and he had to swallow. Why hadn’t the Doctor been there, four years ago? Where the fuck had he been?!  
“Damn you,” he whispered, this time quietly enough that nobody heard him, blinking to force away the wetness in his eyes. _‘Damn you.’_

Sometimes he wondered whether the Doctor was a blessing or a curse; then he met him, again, and he _knew_ he was a blessing.

Blessings never did come when you wanted them to, did they?

*

Crawford looked out of the window, his lip twitching. Oh, the irony.

They were going to meet the others in Switzerland. Not in a big city with airport, but close enough that they could head there should they need to. Not too close to San Gottardo, but just close enough that they could reach it within two hours.

They more or less blindly headed in that vague direction and had ended up here in the pouring rain, were parking next to a hotel, Ken and Crawford smirking, Farfarello smiling benignly and Gwen and Griffin not really knowing what was so funny.

Gwen turned off the engine. “Okay, what am I missing?” Nothing bad, from the looks of it. Everyone seemed way too amused for that.

Crawford felt like indulging her; she had become a bit like a protégée for him, and he was curious of what she would prove to be capable, given enough time and the right circumstances.  
“You know about the former team names, yes?”

Gwen nodded. “Weiß and Schwarz?“

Crawford nodded in return. “Weiß got their name, because they were designed to take us out.”

Gwen blinked. She hadn’t known about that little detail... “Isn’t that kind of stupid? Designing a team against paranormals?” She turned to look over her shoulder. “No offense,” she said to Ken who grinned at her.

“Hey, we’re all still alive, you know.”

It made Gwen laugh a little.

Crawford shrugged. “There was a family feud behind it. They’re usually not very logical. Be that as it may,” he changed the topic, “driven by some romantic or self-righteous idea, said creator called the team _Weiß Kreuz_.” He raised an eyebrow and smirked.

“Ah,” Gwen said, amused and looked out of the window, again. “So we are in a town named Rotkreuz, meaning red cross, in front of hotel Kreuz.” She grinned at Crawford. “I can see where you would find that funny.”

Even Griffin smiled at that.

Gwen’s smile lessened a bit. “The red part worries me a bit.” She cleared her throat. “Let’s see if they have enough rooms, at all, for the lot of us.” She opened the door and got out.

Ken sighed. “She’s got a point, there, Brad.”

“We can manage,” Crawford said, firmly. “But there is another variable I can’t quite grasp.” He looked Farfarello straight in the eye through the rear-view mirror. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?” He knew damn well that there was something hidden in that twisted mind that could theoretically clear up the variable. He also knew that Farfarello either didn’t want to reveal that or simply was unable to put it into words. Or possibly both.

The Irish man smiled back. “Depends on your definition of knowledge, Crawford.”

Crawford sighed. He was not in the mood for a philosophical riddle. “Shut up,” he said, making Farfarello snicker and got out of the car, closely followed by the other three.

*

Gwen came out of the shower, feeling pretty much blissful after the drive and the constant fight with her nerves before Crawford had confirmed that everything was alright. She still wanted the other team to get there as fast as possible. She wanted to see them with her own eyes.

She dried her hair with a towel and found Crawford brooding over the alien device that he still carried with him.  
Gwen had only been able to look at it once when Crawford had shown it to Jack. Curious, she stepped closer.  
“Is it doing something?”

“Scanning.”

“Well, it’s a scanner. That’s what it’s supposed to do.”

Crawford leaned back in his chair and looked at her. “I didn’t turn it on.”

“Oh.” That was... not good. Potentially. “M-maybe Jack can make something of it,” she stuttered quickly, “now that it’s doing something else...?” It sounded more like a question than a statement.

Crawford nodded. “I was hoping, yes.” Jack had been unable to identify the device, though he had been almost sure that there was a timer installed. It looked like that guess was a right one.

Gwen inched even closer. “Is it scanning us, do you think?” She looked at the waves highlighting the small screen.

“From what I gather,” Crawford said, shaking his head, “it scans time or possibly space. Distance.” He wasn’t sure how to put it, but it looked like some sort of countdown. Something coming closer in either time or space. “I’m guessing travellers.”

All colour left Gwen’s face. “They’re coming.” She heard her memory answer like an echo in her head, _‘We are coming,’_ and her stomach turned to ice.

“So it would seem, yes.” Her reaction didn’t bode well. He still only had some ideas what had happened, four years ago, on the other side of the goings-on. Only what he had known from his own observations and what Jack had disclosed, hesitantly. But after everything Gwen had to see in Torchwood and while being with his team, having worked closely with Farfarello, knowing what was expecting them on the pass... it was the thought of the aliens returning that really frightened her.  
“I did some calculations,” he added. “I can’t guarantee it, but I don’t think they’re at the front gate, just yet. The waves are too wide.”

Gwen nodded, tensely, the focus of her eyes far away. “I’ll just believe you, then.” Not much else she could do, was there?

Crawford stared at the scanner, or rather, he stared _through_ it. “Rosenkreuz should be aware that Harkness is with us, now that he killed one of the elders. We definitely have their attention.”

Gwen held her towel in her hands, wringing it a little, biting her lips. “The whole bait thing.” She had forgotten about that one, actually. Or maybe she had just preferred not to remember.

Crawford nodded. “Yes.” He lifted his head to look at her. “It’ll get us in, that’s for sure.”

“How do...” She swallowed. “How are we going to do this? They will know that we’re coming. They’ll know it’s a trap.”

“Their master telepath is out of the equation. Which means we only have to deal with precogs who could possibly know what we’re doing.” He smirked. “And we have Farfarello.”

The mention of the Irish man shook Gwen out of her frozen terror and made her think in a different direction, again. “I wish I knew what’s wrong with him,” she said, absently.

“He’s insane.”

Gwen shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. The woman he keeps talking about, the fact that he can’t be predicted, the things he knows...” She stared Crawford square in the eyes. “You can’t tell me that you think there is nothing hidden in there.”

Crawford returned the look. “I’ve noticed. He is...” After all these years he still didn’t know what the man was, but an image was beginning to form in his mind. “... Something like the Captain. An anomaly.”

Gwen fidgeted and finally asked the obvious question. “Can he be killed, do you think?”

“Usually, I wouldn’t even consider the option, but given the circumstances, that is a very good question.” Crawford smirked. “I have no idea.”

It made Gwen snort in amusement. “We shouldn’t try to find out, then.”

Crawford chuckled. “No, we shouldn’t.” Though sometimes, he wouldn’t have minded killing Farfarello, even if just a little, when he was being particularly annoying. “In time, we might find out, anyway.” He sobered. They would all be confronted with their mortality sooner rather than later.

Gwen bit her lips, again. She didn’t know why, but she felt weirdly motherly towards Farfarello, she had noticed. And that train of thought always led her to his real mother, and those were usually thoughts better left alone.

Speaking of motherly. That was not something she usually was... it made her feel guilty.

Crawford noticed the expression and understood. Gwen was very easy to read, and she had her own demons that made an appearance, every now and then. “When Nagi and Omi are here, they can establish a secure line for you to call your husband, Gwen.”

That was like a punch in the gut, and Gwen felt sick. She had called Rhys, every now and then, but not since London. Given that he probably kept tabs of what happened, he must have been worried sick after the explosion.  
“He’s worried,” she said, quietly. “And he said that our boy keeps asking for me.” Her breath hitched. “It’s not like I don’t miss them. It’s not!” She didn’t know whether she felt the need to convince herself or Crawford, but the man nodded.

“I didn’t say that.”

“I just know... I know that I need to be here. This is where I belong.”

Crawford sighed. “You can take my word on this...” He leaned forward. “Your son will not be safe in this world, if we do not succeed.”

Gwen trembled a little.

“Feel free to let your husband know that.”

*

Jack had expected Schuldig to pretty much jump Crawford the moment they entered the hotel room. He did not expect it to be the other way around.

 

Schuldig had been oddly hesitant to even enter the hotel.  
They had several rooms, but they were currently all supposed to regroup and discuss the situation in one of them.  
Schuldig had looked out of the window of the car, into the rain and up at the hotel. He had looked forward to seeing Brad, again, up until that moment.

He had aced the mission without Brad. He had dealt with being separate from Brad, the team and his telepathy, admirably. He had made a decision to go against direct orders, but he knew that this, too, would be approved of.  
He had never before in his life wanted to tell the other man just how much he meant to him. Fuck.

Schuldig had then entered the room behind everyone else; he had dampened his telepathy (he wasn’t sure he was ready to peek through the shields Brad had in place, at all times); he had vaguely registered Gwen hugging Jack...

Then Brad had looked at him around the other people with an expression Schuldig had never seen on the precog’s face.

 

Jack smiled over Gwen’s shoulder when he saw Crawford stride purposefully towards his lover, frame his face with both hands and kiss him deeply.

Neither of the two men took notice of anyone else at that time and disappeared into the adjoining bedroom.

The weird air around the team because of Schuldig’s uncharacteristic hesitancy burst like a bubble with the bang of the door.

Youji raised an eyebrow and smirked. “I guess the debriefing is postponed.”

Ken laughed and hugged first Youji, who was the closest and then continued to do the same to Aya, Omi and even Nagi who smiled crookedly at the gesture.

*

For a long while, Schuldig let Brad pamper, kiss and caress him, basking in the afterglow. It felt too good to be back in those arms and feeling the security that his lover’s presence always woke in him.  
After a long while, he broke the kiss however and rested his face in the crook of Brad’s neck, inhaling deeply.

“That was really impressive,” Crawford finally said.

Schuldig snorted but couldn’t help smiling smugly. “I know that, thanks.”

Crawford tilted Schuldig’s head backwards and grinned at him. “I missed that attitude of yours.”

“Poor baby.”

Crawford kissed him, again. {Forgive me.}

Schuldig returned the kiss and mentally shrugged off that request. {No need, Brad. We survived.}

Just this once, however, Brad Crawford didn’t want to listen to his own inner voice that told him to stay on the safe side. Harkness couldn’t be all that wrong, what with the life-times of experience, could he?  
{I’m an idiot. But I love you.}

Schuldig had to break the kiss, because a dry sob escaped him and crushed Brad to him.

“That took too long. Sorry.”

Schuldig shook his head. “Shut it, Brad.”

Crawford chuckled. “You know, I think the commonly accepted response would be something else, in such a situation...”

Schuldig giggled an embarrassingly unmanly giggle. “Yeah. Love your stupid Yank ass, too.”

Crawford held him for a long moment and let himself enjoy it. “I meant it, though. The other thing. Both things, I mean.” God, he still couldn’t really name it. “Good job.”

“One down, everyone else to go,” Schuldig answered sardonically. Then he remembered something.  
He freed himself of the embrace and sat up. As much as he had looked forward to seeing Brad, again, this wasn’t really the time to forget about their goals.  
“Do you know anything about a doctor?”

Crawford looked up at him. “What doctor?”

Schuldig tried to remember. “Not really sure. Something Jack said. He spoke about some doctor never being there when he needed him.”

Crawford frowned. Well, there was someone filed as ‘Doctor’, he had even seen a blurred image of him, at some point. “I might have an idea, yes.”

“Could he help?”

Crawford snorted. “He’s so classified that each and every intelligence agency and free-lancer knows about him.”

Schuldig grinned. “Kind of like us.”

“Something like that,” Crawford agreed, smirking. “But he’s slippery. Appears and disappears at random, or so they say. Given all the recent developments, he might even be an alien.”

Schuldig rolled his eyes. “Doctor ET, then.”

Crawford chuckled, both amused and not without a certain fondness. “As good a name as any,” he agreed.  
He groaned and sat, as well. “We should get out there, again. Lots of things to discuss.”

“We shouldn’t have gone in here, in the first place,” Schuldig said and grinned at Crawford. “I like the breach of protocol, Mr. Crawford.”

Crawford slung one arm around Schuldig’s shoulder and ran a hand through the flaming hair. “Fuck protocol. I always did prefer to make my own rules.”

Schuldig leaned into the touch. “That you did. Control freak.”

“Did I or did I not just let you fuck me?”

Schuldig reconsidered his choice of words. “Hedonist?”

“You taught me.”

Schuldig sighed theatrically. “Doesn’t my dick feel a lot better than the stick that used to be up there?”

Crawford snorted. “You’re an asshole.”

“Hmm,” Schuldig agreed. “And what’s more important, I have one.” He wiggled his eyebrows.

Crawford had to laugh at that. “Get out there.”

Schuldig grinned widely. Their odds were as fucked as they had ever been, but he already felt better.

He hadn’t minded hearing that other little thing, either. It made him feel uncharacteristically warm and fuzzy. But, truth to be told, he had known that, for a long time. Had known they both felt this way. It was a large part of what they had become: a perfectly oiled machine, each part knowing what to do to complement the other, at all times.  
A psychologist would probably have called that co-dependent, but Schuldig couldn’t really be assed to care. In the end, he would survive. They both would.

*

When Schuldig and Crawford joined the rest of their team, again, they were being expected.

Jack held the scanner in hand and explained something to Aya who seemed interested; the boys and Griffin were hunched over some computers, and Gwen watched them, trying to hide her red eyes by avoiding looking at anyone. All of the people present had some food they chewed absently.

Once again, a team created by necessity. And once again, Crawford was surprised at how well that seemed to work. Schwarz, Weiß, Torchwood and even Griffin. Working together for long enough against the odds would bind anyone together, most likely.

And the constellation had proven to be perfectly capable of working even when split at the most disadvantageous of all places. Crawford was honestly impressed. He had chosen his allies well... as he had always known he would.

Finally, Crawford nodded at the device Jack was holding in his hand. “Anything you can tell me about that?”

Jack nodded. “The scanner is up and running, alright.” He held up the little thing, now constantly flashing lights. “It shows the distance to something. And according to these readings, the distance is growing smaller.” He looked at the waves, again. “My guess would be that this was left here so that it could be used as an alarm clock or something. Tell your Rosenkreuz people when they should set the dinner table.”

That was about what Crawford had been expecting. It didn’t stop him from holding his breath along with Schuldig when Jack told them what the reading said.

“Whatever is coming closer will be here in about a week.”


	13. Business

“Madam Chancellor, welcome to La Claustra,” the receptionist said with a polite if a bit distant smile.

Gwen returned the smile, ignoring the tenseness that came from within her and tried to break free. “Thank you.” Her strict clothes didn’t really help to ease her, either, but it did help to uphold the person she was supposed to be.

“Would you and your charges like be led to the rooms, right away, or shall we bring your luggage ahead? The dining room is open at present.”

“We would like to see the rooms, now. It was been quite the taxing journey.”

“Of course, madam.”

Gwen swallowed her anxiety, nodded quickly at the two young men behind her and then they followed their porter.  
She made sure to give the man a generous tip, let him close the door behind himself, and then she breathed a deep sigh of relief. The next thing she did, was take off her constricting jacket.

Omi and Nagi set up their equipment, right away, and Gwen went to the bathroom.

“You in there?” she asked.

Farfarello slipped out. “Where I am supposed to be,” he replied.

Gwen nodded, nervously. “Good. Without the block, I’d probably broadcast all over the place.”

Farfarello moved around the room, languidly and finally settled in a chair. “Rest assured that with the current proximity, everyone would broadcast.”

“They are in position,” Omi reported, dutifully.

Gwen breathed again and shook her tingly hands.

“Breathe out,” Farfarello said, calmly. “You are hyperventilating.”

“What?” Gwen asked, much more feeling like there wasn’t enough air in the room, at all.

“Breathe out as far as it will go and hold it. The body breathes in on its own.”

Gwen blinked but did what he said... and she did feel better, afterwards. She also felt like an idiot. She was supposed to be an asset to trained assassins and jittered, already, even though they’d only just started what was going to be a very long day and night.

“You’ll be fine,” Nagi said. “Once we’re done sitting around, you’ll do what you have to do.”

She really hoped that this assumption was correct. “I feel like police training doesn’t really help for situations like this, at all.”

Omi’s lip twitched. “I don’t think that this is a situation that police training is designed for.”

Gwen smiled, crookedly. “No, I guess not.”

“Harkness is fine,” Farfarello said, sounding distracted.

Which was of course the major concern Gwen had at the moment. She sent him a sharp look. “You mean apart from dying again and again?”

Farfarello just smiled at her. “The lengths people will go to are quite fascinating.”

Gwen fidgeted. “Yes, well, an alien invasion can do that to someone.”

Farfarello tilted his head, amused. “That was not the reason he came here for, though, was it?”

No. No, it wasn’t. Gwen remembered quite well what in the end had convinced Jack to go to London and meet Brad Crawford without a second thought. Or, well, he did have those second thoughts – all of them founded – but he simply didn’t care, anymore.

Jack had been following a powerful motivator. Possibly the most powerful motivator he had ever known, despite him having to save the world on a regular basis.

Gwen also remembered seeing the name on the screen. She remembered how in that moment she wished with all her might that it was true.  
And yet she could only have felt an inkling of what Jack must have felt.

They were so close...

~

Jack was in his own, personal limbo, again. Only this time, whenever he felt his body trying to rip him out of it, a jolt went through him and kept him where he was.

It wasn’t that he realised what was happening to him on a conscious level – his brain wasn’t really functioning while he was dead – but he... _lived_ through it, nonetheless, even though he was not alive.  
And he knew that whatever moment he was captured in, right now, would end, soon enough. He just had to wait. Wait for something. For someone he trusted.

That wasn’t a new sensation to him. The connection to people in the realm of the living had always been there for him, even if his mind couldn’t grasp it. He could rely on his make-shift families as much as they could rely on him. He would return, and he would be expected.

One thing was different, this time, though. All the other times, no matter how strong his feelings of obligations might have been, one small part of him always wished that he would not wake up, anymore. The part that wished that he would finally be able to find his peace. He had suffered through enough life-times, hadn’t he? Enough losses?  
This time, however, he didn’t wish for time and life to end. More than anything, he wished for whoever was keeping him there to let him out, again. There was something he needed to do. Something that even surpassed the need and was one of the few things he really, truly _wanted_.

He could almost feel it. Like a wisp touching his spirit. So close... so very close...

_I’m coming for you._

~

Schuldig for his part wasn’t in a limbo; he was in _hell_. Fine, so Brad was there, which was the only reason he didn’t fall to pieces, but only just.

_‘Oracle, Mastermind.’_

The woman approaching them whispered in their minds.

Schuldig swivelled around and stared at her. “Get the fuck out of my head, you little maggot!” he hissed.

Crawford put a calming as well as a warning hand on his shoulder.

The woman on her part didn’t seem impressed. “I’m not afraid of you. You came crawling to us, bearing a gift. Which was also the only reason you were not killed on the spot. You are in our hands, now, again.”

Schuldig’s eyes ran colder, if that was even possible. His exterior was calm, again, though. “We are still alive because I am the most powerful telepath to ever walk this institute, especially now that the Duchess is dead.” He slowly walked towards her. “We are still alive because Brad has made predictions of such precision that it would make each and every one of your little toys drop on their knees in awe.” He stopped right in front of her. “And we brought you the Captain because he was in our way.”

Crawford cleared his throat.

Schuldig ignored him. “Not afraid, are you? You should be.”

“That’s enough,” Crawford interfered, again. He had been thoroughly enjoyed Schuldig having a go at her – not that he would have done so visibly – but enough was enough. They didn’t need the extra problems this might have caused, just now.

Schuldig straightened.

The woman did the same. “Whatever.” She waved them off with a hand. “Your presence is required, tonight. I was going to show you to your rooms, but I’m sure you can find them on your own, since you’re so powerful.” She shoved a key card into Brad’s hand.  
With that, she stalked off.

Schuldig snickered, once she was out of sight and hearing range. “ _Whatever_?” he mocked. “Do the kids these days get to watch MTV here?”

Brad smirked.

“The world is truly coming to an end,” Schuldig said, regretfully and grinned that he had made Brad chuckle. He walked in the direction of their rooms, whose location he had got out of the woman’s mind without her even noticing, despite her training.

It was kind of a relief, that little burst of superiority. They could both use it.

It didn’t feel good to be home. No, not at all.

The kids had better clear the electronic path so that they could get the fuck out, soon.

~

“He is restless,” a voice in his room said.

What a ridiculous notion. He was hardly _there_ , how could he be restless?

“Several possible reasons for that,” somebody else answered, cautiously.

“Agreed. Most are more likely than the... additional presence in the institute.”

Presence? If he’d have had any control over his body, he’d have huffed, which kind of felt good. He hadn’t been able to even think about huffing in a long time. Time... was changing or approaching or... moving or something. Moving, yes. Time was moving.  
There wasn’t so much an additional presence as there was an additional shift in time, a new variable. It was driving the precogs nuts, he knew. Driving them nuts a lot more than they were aware of.  
He was aware of it, though. Their thoughts were still coursing through him, now even less directed than they had been when that major telepath or whatever the hell she was disappeared.

Restless. Maybe he was restless after all. Maybe the undirected thoughts made him restless. Maybe their fear of something he could not quite put his finger on but that still frightened him as something familiar and deadly made him restless. Maybe the turning and churning time made him restless. Maybe his mind finally broke under the strain... and he would be... set free.

No. That was not happening. Not that. Not now. He was expected.

“Can they be trusted?”

He wanted to huff again and tell them that if they hadn’t figured that one out by now, it was a miracle they survived for this long.

“Not for an instant.”

Oh, good. He had been worried there for a moment.

“But we are still going to,” the other voice said.

Suit yourself. Idiot.

“We have no choice at this point.”

With that, both voices left the room and left the floating presence alone, again.

Well, good. He had been getting tired of their insecurities on top of the sick thoughts of domination. Time was moving for him and dwindling for them.

His lip twitched.

_‘He’s here.’_

~

Youji screwed an explosive device into the cold rock of the mountain cave the “hotel” was built into. “This would be a lot faster if we could split up,” he complained.

“And be discovered without a paranormal shield,” Aya repeated for the umpteenth time in a short while from where he was doing the same with another wall.

Griffin was nervous enough as it was. His eyes kept darting to the video surveillance that was whirring back and forth, capturing them twice a minute.

Ken stepped up next to him. “Omi and Nagi have that one covered, or this place would be swarming with agents. Just worry about the shield, yes?”

Griffin nodded, jerkily. “I am. Or the swarming agents would be here, anyway.” He smiled ruefully, though it looked more like a grimace than a real smile.

The camera whirred again, making the boy startle.

“Easy,” Ken calmed him.

Griffin blinked. “I know that we have the strongest paranormals on our side, but that doesn’t mean we’re not outnumbered about thirty to one.”

“Hence the explosives,” Youji said, putting up another one.

Aya finished with the one he was working on and stowed away his equipment. “Done. Youji?”

“Done.”

Aya nodded. “We’re done,” he said into his headset. It was different, being dependent on technology again, once they’d got used to telepathy. But Brad had assured them that it would be even more so for the Rosenkreuz operatives who would rely heavily on paranormal tools and not technological ones. They of course used technology to their advantage – they even used technology to their advantage that they could not even begin to understand – but they underestimated it. Underestimated it enough to rely more on their paranormal superiority and maybe miss a simple radio frequency if it was disguised.

“Copy,” Nagi answered in his ear. “Camera in the next area ready.”

The four of them made their way deeper into the cave used as a corridor, and Ken put a supporting arm around Griffin.

“You holding up?”

Griffin nodded. “There is something coming. I can’t put my finger on it, and it’s... disquieting.”

Aya snorted. “Not even Brad knows what it is. Don’t worry about it.”

“Farfarello knows,” Griffin said.

The other three reacted with a dark expression. Youji said, “Here’s to hoping that he really is on our side.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Ken admonished him. “Of course he is.”

Youji nodded. “I agree, but he is also insane. So...” he rephrased in his mind, “... let’s hope his idea of being on our side matches ours.” He tilted his head towards Ken. “Better?”

Ken rolled his eyes. He _had_ wondered about that, but he hadn’t really worried. All kinds of things freaked him out about Farfarello. He worked with the man, he trusted the man, he even kind of liked the man, but he was still one scary lunatic.  
“It will be,” he said, actually believing it.

“It will be,” Griffin repeated absently.

~

Gwen walked up and down the room, gnawed on her thumbnail and felt so _useless_. Farfarello sitting in a chair and humming a nameless tune didn’t help calm her, either. She would have told him to fucking stop it, already, but he looked so... content.  
“How much longer?”

The boys looked stressed, and Gwen in return didn’t help that. Nagi was more pale than usually and Omi used all his strength to calm his boyfriend, which in return made him more nervous.

Omi cleared his throat and looked up. “They’re on schedule. Three more.”

It didn’t help her nerves, any. “I shouldn’t have come here. I’m jeopardising the mission. All I’m supposed to do is be your decoy and stay in the hotel room. All I _am_ doing is closing in on a nervous break-down and taking you down with me. If it wasn’t more of a risk, I’d just leave, again and...”

“SHUT UP!” Omi’s usually so friendly and calm face looked anything but, right then. He took a deep breath. “Brad said that it was imperative that you are here. He doesn’t know why, but if he thought that you would be a liability more than an asset, bet your ass you wouldn’t be here.”

Gwen froze in her steps.

“Now sit the fuck down and stay focused, agent!”

Gwen stared at him for a long moment, trying to pull herself together and do as he said. She managed to move, eventually and went to sit on a chair next to Farfarello.  
She knew all the facts. For whatever reason, she had to be here and would be of... some kind of assistance, but that didn’t change the fact that she was currently swimming in cold water with the Titanic pulling her under and no idea whether or not she would survive, even if she managed to surface with her purpose finally revealed to her.

Omi sighed. “Look, I’m sorry...”

“No,” Gwen interrupted him. “You’re right. Just because I don’t know what to focus on doesn’t mean that I can’t focus at all. I’ll just have to make do, somehow.”

Omi’s hand went to his ear. “We’ll clear the next corridor,” he said into his communicator, and he and Nagi did just that.

Gwen breathed and made sure she concentrated on breathing _out_ , which had already proven to be effective.  
Two more corridors and then it would be Jack’s turn.

“Are you losing it, Madam Chancellor?” Farfarello smirked.

Gwen shot him a dark look. “Shut it.” Better angry than panicked, after all.

“Time is almost here,” Farfarello said, leaning back, contently. “Tick tock.”

Nagi rubbed his face. “Farf, I swear, if you keep doing that, I’m gonna kill you, personally.”

“You’ll be rid of me, soon enough, prodigy.”

Nagi flinched. “Didn’t say I wanted to be rid of you. Just kill you a little.” He smiled at that.

Unlike Nagi’s expectation, Gwen didn’t start to freak out again at the mention of time running out. She was still turning those words around in her head.  
“What did you mean by _time_ being almost here?”

Farfarello smiled at her and his eye glowed. “Tick tock.”

Gwen’s eyes widened as something in her mind finally clicked. She didn’t have the whole picture, yet, but...

“Clearing the corridor,” Omi said into his headset in the quiet of the room.

Gwen looked at him. It was almost Jack’s turn, now.  
Then she turned back to Farfarello, completing that one corner of the puzzle. “She’s coming?”

“Tick tock.”

~

Blue eyes sprang open, not with a gasp but with a quiet sigh.

_‘Here we go.’_


	14. High Time

Jack looked around, moving his head on the operating table (or so he assumed) he was lying on, trying to move as little as possible, carefully opening his shirt and ripping off the small device that had sat on his chest, sending the electric charges through his heart to keep him dead.

He could hear two people just around the corner but still in the medical facility he was in. They were talking about him.

“… freaks me out.”

“It’s like he’s not all there, you know. Like the immortality deleted his brain.”

Jack smirked. That assumption must have been plausible for a telepath, but it was also terribly wrong. He slid off the table and soundlessly closed in on the two guards or doctors or whatever. He could peek around the corner without them noticing him, but to be fair, people didn’t tend to expect being ambushed by a dead guy.

One of them had a gun...

Jack’s hand shot forward, grabbed the gun, and both were dead before they could do so much as blink.  
He straightened and stowed the gun away. “Don’t they let you guys watch zombie movies, here?” he asked, rhetorically. “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

~

Crawford and Schuldig for their part were still holed up in their windowless room and waited. Waited a lot longer than Schuldig was comfortable with, which wasn’t long to begin with and even less right now.

Suddenly, Crawford opened his eyes and stood. “Our presence is required.”

“About damn time,” Schuldig declared with feel and followed his lover out of the room.

At first, they headed right where they were supposed to, towards the conference room they had been ordered to... and then took a different turn.

“This shit had better work,” Schuldig mumbled.

Crawford agreed, if silently. To his estimation, they had no more than five minutes before the whole station was up in arms and ready to take them out on all fronts.  
He checked his watch.

They rounded another corner and heard two shots being fired behind a door.

Schuldig smirked. “The Captain is awake.”

Crawford answered the smirk and placed a small explosive device on the electronic lock on the doorframe. They both stepped back.

With one loud _BANG_ the lock was literally blown out of the wall, the door opened and Jack stepped through it, now even wearing his customary coat.

~

Gwen nervously sat close to Nagi and stared at the one small video feed that showed the actual happenings and not the ones that the Rosenkreuz security was currently viewing.  
She laughed in relief as she saw Jack stepping through the smoke the explosion had caused, brushing off the dust on his sleeves.

Even Nagi had to smile at that. “Omi did you...?” He turned around to find his boyfriend hunched over on the floor. “Omi!”

Omi held his flat hand on his forehead and tried to sit up. Gwen and Nagi were by his side in a heartbeat, aiding him.

“Omi?” Nagi asked, again, pulling the hand away to look him in the eyes. “Let me see.”

Omi shook his head to clear it and looked at Nagi... who blinked in confusion.  
Gwen saw it, too. A short flare of yellow in Omi’s eyes that disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.

“There is... something...” Omi tried to say.

And Gwen swivelled around. “Where is Farfarello?” Her eyes widened on the open door. “No,” she said. “No, no, no, no, no!” She was on her feet before she knew what she was doing and running out the room, slamming the door behind her.

Nagi was torn between worry for Omi and panic because their shield was gone.

“He gave me...” Omi tried again, having to fight for every word.

Nagi clung to Omi’s sleeves. “What?” he was rapidly closing in on the panic side of the scale and already plotting the shortest way out of the facility.

Omi squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again after a moment. He took a deep breath. “Farfarello gave me a part of what is inside of him.”

Nagi furrowed his brow.

“Just a small part. I can shield us.” He panted, now, but was able to sit on his own, again. “Get back to work.”

Nagi hesitated, so Omi shoved his shoulder. “Go, love, _please_.” And Nagi complied, manning the security feeds, again, even though they wouldn’t be able to completely hide the shenanigans going on in the institute, but at least this would buy them some time.

“Oh, boy!” Omi said, loudly, letting himself fall backwards. At Nagi’s immediate reaction, he waved him off. “I’m fine... just... _man_ , this is fucked up!”

Nagi helplessly tried to keep his attention on the cameras, but all but squeaked: “What the hell did he _do_ to you?!”

“I’m... This is all shades of awesome, I wish you could see it.” He stared at the ceiling with wide eyes.

That didn’t exactly ease Nagi’s worry.

“It’s only temporary, I think. He only just gave me enough to last for this purpose and for the moment.” Omi’s large eyes looked at things that obviously only he could see, his pupils were dilated and there was an absent smile on his face.

“Are you high?” Nagi asked, now indignant as well as worried.

“I guess...” Omi allowed. At least it felt like it. Then he slowly shook his head. “If he only gave me a little of this, and there is so much more inside of him... no wonder he’s insane.”

Nagi switched from one camera to the next, then he asked the last open question. “How did he give a part of his _insanity_ to you?”

Omi blinked. That had been the oddest thing. “He... kissed me.”

~

The moment Gwen had dashed out of the door, she could see a flash of white disappear around the corner. She ran after him. “Farfarello!” Again, she caught just a glimpse of him after that and knew what direction to go.

They played that game for almost a minute, Gwen never stopping to think what she was doing, that she was running out of their safe room, that Omi and Nagi were now without Farfarello’s shield, that she wasn’t sticking to the plan in the least...  
Then she caught up with him.

Or, rather, he was waiting for her, his breathing laboured and ragged.

She stopped dead a few feet away from him and approached him slowly, cautiously. “Farfarello? What are you doing?”

“You need to take me.” His eye was now very visibly and very disturbingly glowing golden.

“Take you where?”

“The amplifier.”

Gwen blinked. “You mean Ianto?”

Farfarello nodded.

When Gwen stepped even closer, she could see that the man was sweating, looking even paler than usual.

The light in Farfarello’s eye flared more brightly for a second, and he doubled over.

Gwen kneeled next to him and held him securely. “What is going on?”

“Take me,” he rasped.

“I’m taking you, I’m taking you!” she rushed out, helping him up and steadying him. “But what is going on?!”

“She’s coming.” Farfarello nodded. “The room your Ianto is in is an artificial temporal and spatial anomaly. Non-existence within existence. Take me there.”

They stumbled along the corridors, Gwen desperately trying to remember where that room was located, but Farfarello seemed to know, guiding them.

Gwen sent worried glances towards the man she was holding up, again and again. There was nothing left of the deadly grace and insane strength, only single-minded determination. Farfarello could hardly move one foot in front of the other and kept stumbling.

Then, within the blink of an eye, Farfarello was out of her arms and on the other side of the corridor, an enemy agent making a gurgling noise, before he fell to the ground, dead, blood staining the floor and the Irishman.

Gwen startled and almost screamed, her hands darting to her mouth.

Farfarello tried to stand, but seeing as the threat was gone, his legs wouldn’t carry him. He fell down, again. His face was contorted in pain and there was blood on his cheek. His own blood.

Gwen shook herself out of her stupor, determinedly looked away from the mutilated dead body lying on the ground and went to check on Farfarello who was shielding his eye... or, rather, the side where he _didn’t_ have an eye.

“There, let me...” she tried to coax him.

Farfarello shook his head and ripped off the eye patch.

Gwen jumped back. Instead of only one, two perfectly healthy eyes stared at her, the golden glow taking on weirdly live movements, swirling and twisting.

“Oh, God...” she said, forgetting that under normal circumstances that was not the thing to say to that man. While she had never seen this phenomenon, she knew it well, knew that the effects could do a lot more than re-grow a lost eye. They could also do a lot worse.  
Tears gathered in her eyes. “He will be able to take it out of you, right?” she asked.

Farfarello looked at her.

“The Doctor? He’ll take it out and give it back to her, right?” She didn’t know if she was reassuring him or herself.

“Take me,” Farfarello repeated.

~

Omi and Nagi spent about five minutes on their own, watching over the security feed, clearing the path for the three teams instead of only two, at the same time seeing that at the moment the only agents that had been aware of the threat were the ones walking into either Crawford, Schuldig and Jack or Gwen and Farfarello.

That was when Youji, Aya, Ken and Griffin trouped into their room according to plan and found something that was not at all according to plan.

Aya stepped in front of Youji the second they were in the room. “Where the hell are they?” His narrowed eyes widened when he saw the state Omi was in.

Omi was sitting next to Nagi, looking about as drunk as you could possibly look without having touched a drop of alcohol.

Youji froze as well, Griffin quickly closed the door and remained nervously out of the way, and Ken immediately darted to Omi’s side.

“What happened?” he asked, his hands reaching for Omi’s eyes, lifting one upper lid a bit.

Omi uncoordinatedly waved away his hand. “I got an overdose of crazy.”

Before Nagi could re-phrase that entirely unhelpful answer, Griffin tilted his head, confused and stepped slowly further into the room.  
“You’re... shielding.”

Omi nodded and pointed a finger at Griffin. “That’s what I was saying,” he confirmed, somehow finding it terribly funny.

Youji’s eyebrows almost disappeared under some stray bangs. “Farf did this,” he said. He didn’t ask, per se, since this was the only possible answer that made sense, except that it didn’t make sense at all. Then his brain caught up with what he said. “Wait. He what?”

Nagi nodded, helplessly. “That’s what he did. He somehow... gave Omi some of whatever the hell is inside him. Enough to shield, for now.”

“Then he ran off and Gwen after him,” Omi added.

Aya crossed his arms. “Where are they going?”

Nagi bit his lips and looked at the screens. “He didn’t say.” He paused. “It looks like they’re heading for Jones, as well,” he added, quietly.

Youji positioned himself behind Nagi and looked at the screen. “He’s leading Gwen.”

Nagi nodded. “Yes, he’s definitely the one of the two who wants to go there.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Ken looked up from checking on Omi. “I mean, I’d get Gwen wanting to go there, but Farf...”

Aya turned slightly, looking at Griffin. “What’s in there? Other than the amplifier?”

Griffin shook his head. “I- I don’t know.”

Aya walked up to him. “Yes, you do. Whatever you remember. Tell me.” His amethyst eyes bore into Griffin’s. “Remember,” he urged him with a quiet but tense voice.

Griffin wracked his brain, trying to remember something that the Rosenkreuz instructors and the elders had shielded from their students.

Youji joined Aya. “It doesn’t have to be anything special. Whatever you remember,” he repeated Aya’s words with an encouraging nod.

Griffin nodded, shakily. “Well, the amplifier is being held in a force field that keeps him captivated and at the same time the muscles active so that the body survives longer.”

Nagi lifted his head. “That doesn’t sound like technology that is from around here...”

Griffin shook his head. “No, it couldn’t be. The room itself is...” he blinked, “like Farfarello.” He lifted his downturned head and looked at Nagi with wide eyes. “The room is a... a nullfield.”

Aya shifted. “An artificial one?”

Griffin pondered that for a second. “It has to be. The amplifier definitely doesn’t create it.”

“The first group is there,” Nagi announced in the silence that had ensued after Griffin’s assessment, and all eyes were firmly on the screens. Farfarello and Gwen were still a considerable distance away from that room, Farfarello slowing them down, his steps visibly losing strength by the second.

Youji breathed deeply and crossed his arms. “I have the feeling we’re not going to stick to the plan and stay here for long.”

Griffin blinked rapidly. “No. We’re not.”

~

Jack ran next to Crawford and behind Schuldig who ran superficial scans on agents they came across, but they might as well have forgone the scanning, Schuldig hadn’t found a single one where he could have broken the conditioning. All they could do was cloud them for long enough so that Crawford or Jack could shoot them.

Thankfully, not many crossed their paths, since they stayed away from main corridors. The room holding an amplifier of course was physically separated from most of the agents, for logistical, safety and even “mystery” reasons. The latter was particularly useful if one wanted to keep up the appearance of paranormality and not let on that some if not a large part of the superhuman power was in fact alien technology. All in all, it probably wouldn’t do to allow too many people to know that there was someone even more powerful around...

They came to a halt in front of a huge door.

Crawford took out another explosive device. “They will know when we’re in there.”

Jack’s heart was beating almost through his chest, and it had nothing to do with the fact that they had been running and shooting people.  
“Just blow the damn thing open, already!” He didn’t see that Crawford allowed himself a small smirk while applying the device and that Schuldig grinned widely at him behind his back.  
He was... there. Four years. Four years of no hope, and then fleeting weeks of something different. And now he was...

_BANG!_

Jack went through the door first, shooting the person running at them, pulling out a weapon of her own.  
The next thing he knew was that his gun fell from his numb fingers.

“Holy crap,” came Schuldig’s voice in the quiet, white, cold room, his words almost echoing from the sterile walls.

There, in the middle of the room, was a naked form, floating two metres above the ground, surrounded by a blue current of energy. The current appeared to be created by two pillars on the head and foot end, stairs leading to a platform next to the length of the body and from one pillar to the other, assumedly so that the amplifier could be tended to and the appliances on the pillars adjusted.

While Jack ran towards and up those stairs, Crawford signed Schuldig to follow the man. Crawford himself remained by the door.

Jack helplessly stood on the platform in front of the body, his hands hovering over the current, his eyes firmly on the closed eyes. His vision blurred and tears streamed down his face, before he knew, much less could have stopped it.  
“What do I do?” he yelled at Crawford, never looking away from Ianto and only just managing to keep himself from just reaching into the electric field and ripping Ianto out of it.

A hand on his shoulder startled him and he turned to look into vacant green eyes.

~

“The alarm just went off,” Nagi said, biting his lip.

They’d known this was going to happen; Crawford had said so... Crawford had also said that they should stay where they were.

For a painful second nobody said a word.

Finally, Youji said out loud what they were all thinking: “So, who’s in favour of timing the explosives and disobeying orders?”

~

_Ianto!_

Ianto. That was his name! He remembered his name! Ianto. Ianto Jones. He was Ianto Jones!

“His hand moved!”

Well, _move_ was saying a bit much, Ianto almost thought. But it was... it had been... _him_ moving it, not something else. He tried again.

“There! See that?”

{Shut the fuck up, already, Harkness! It’s hard enough keeping him from slipping, again!}

Harkness. Ianto tried to look; he could feel his eyes move frantically back and forth behind his closed eyelids. Harkness. The voice. It had been... _Jack!_

{Okay, I take that back. Keep talking to him.}

“Ianto...?” Jack said, tentatively, his voice wavering. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The voice broke.

What the hell was he sorry for? He was here, wasn’t he? Just like Ianto knew he would be, given enough time.

{Stop apologising,} Schuldig interrupted. {Get moving!}

“I’m sorry it took so long,” Jack apologised, again, anyway. “But I need you to come out now.”

Out?

“Just open your eyes, love, I’m right here.”

The eyelids flinched.

“Yes! Again! We can’t get you out before you’re properly awake.”

But he was awake!

{No, you’re not.}

“Shut the fuck up, Schuldig!”

This time, it was Ianto’s lip that twitched.

“Oh, god. You’re almost there!” Jack urged him. “I need you to come back. Please, come back to me, Ianto!”

Ianto wanted to see him so badly.

“I know I fucked up. I know I don’t really deserve it, but... _please_!”

 _‘Don’t say that. I love you, so, so much. And I want to see you. I want to, I **do**. I love you...’_ Something else moved this time. It felt weird, vibrating, making a sound he’d been longing to make. “Jack...”

 

Schuldig broke the connection in time to see blue eyes stare into blue. “Okay, he’s out! I’m turning this off. Catch him!”

Jack only had the time to say “What?” before the force field disappeared and he darted forward to catch Ianto and hold him close to his chest.

Ianto gasped, his eyes wide open and his body shivering.

“Put him in your coat,” Schuldig. “We’re about to get some company.”

Jack moved to do as he was told, trying to smile at Ianto, reassuring him. Ianto looked so helpless and confused, and Jack didn’t know what to do! Ianto had been in there for so long, because he was stupid enough to-

“Stop it! Empath, remember?”

Shit! Jack did remember and tried to control at least some of his more negative emotions. “We’re getting you out of here,” he whispered. “I love you, I love you so much, and I’m so sorry.”

Ianto’s confused expression cleared up a bit and his eyes focused on Jack’s. “I know.”

Jack laughed through his tears.

“Knew you would come. Waited...”

Jack nodded. Then he blinked and rubbed his eyes, turning to Schuldig. “Shouldn’t he be able to stand?”

Schuldig stared at the door where Crawford was still standing. “He should be. Once the coordination comes back. Might take a while, don’t hold your breath.”

They could hear a commotion from the outside, and Crawford moved from the door. “Move him into the control room!” He nodded in the direction of a glass wall with machines behind it.

Schuldig helped Jack steady Ianto who could only just hold his head up, all of them stumbling down the stairs.

“How are the telepaths doing?” Crawford asked.

At that, Schuldig actually smirked. “They are... pretty much lost, right now. Some of them physically collapsed.”

Crawford nodded. “Good.” He held open the door and all of them slipped in, hiding behind a table.

Jack moved Ianto into a comfortable position, propped up against him. “Okay, what now?”

Crawford looked uncomfortable. “Now, we hope that Schuldig can take out the telekinetics before they can do harm,” he nodded at Schuldig, “the telepaths shouldn’t be a match at all, and the precogs...”

Schuldig narrowed his eyes at him. “What about the precogs?”

“Will be useless when they enter this room.”

“What?!” Schuldig screeched.

Jack just shook his head, amused. “You can’t see a thing, right now, can you?”

Crawford frowned at the amusement in the other’s voice, but shook his head. “No, I can’t. But neither can the others.”

Jack grinned and cocked his gun. “Well, up and at ‘em.” He smiled at Ianto, this time allowing himself to lean in and kiss him.

Neither Crawford nor Schuldig interrupted them with one smartass remark or other. Crawford just silently thanked Harkness for reminding him what kind of consequences holding back could have, and Schuldig was busy scanning the approaching minds.

“Telekinetics up front,” Schuldig confirmed. He dug deeper. “None of them can target without a visual.” He rose on his hunches, gun ready in his hand. “But they could just make the room collapse.”

Crawford shook his head. “They have orders not to harm the amplifier in any way, and there are no telepaths to tell them differently. The room should be safe for a while, yet.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “Any plans on how we’re supposed to get out of here?”

A distant rumble made them flinch.

“Bradley...” Schuldig began, suspiciously, “that was too early.”

“Take care of the telekinetics!” Crawford shot back, getting ready, as well. He knew damn well that it was too early for their explosives to go off! So either it wasn’t _their_ explosives or something else had not gone according to plan. He didn’t know which he would have preferred.

Schuldig did as he was told. “I can block their gift without them noticing, at least the first few,” he confirmed, distantly, his eyes moving in random patterns. There was no chance of him breaking any conditioning, not in the short time that they had. Hopefully, he would be able to use that little trick on the stray agents outside of this hellhole. Agents they would undoubtedly encounter, should they actually make it out alive.

Jack was about to lift himself into an advantageous position to fire, too, but Crawford stopped him.

“Take care of Mr Jones. Under no circumstances must he fall into their hands, again.”

Schuldig and Crawford were ready to shoot the first agents to enter the room over their table they were hidden behind... but...

Schuldig gasped and collapsed, Crawford blinking and shaking his head as if he had got hit by a wave.

“What the fuck is that?!” Schuldig yelled, the moment he could. “They’re... vanishing, dying. I don’t _know_!” He kept trying to keep tabs on the agents approaching them, but all of the closest ones... were... dropping off his perception.

In the corner of his eye, Crawford noticed Jack’s reaction. “Captain?”

Jack knew that feeling. He knew it! It was tingling at the back of his mind, his history, his _life_. All of his lives. “No... can’t be.”  
He made sure that Ianto was propped up against the table and gave him a nod that he could keep himself there, then he went to look around the corner.

“Get the fuck down! We don’t know what that is!” Schuldig said.

But Jack didn’t listen. _He_ knew damn well what it was, and now he could see it, too. The soft golden glow preceding the entrance of Farfarello who was pretty much only kept on his feet by Gwen.

The moment the two were in the room, three things happened: the glow gave another burst that hit them all like a wave; Farfarello fell as if his strings had been cut, losing consciousness; and Crawford jerked, his eyes narrowing.

“The precogs will be able to use this room, now, too,” the American said, grimly.

Schuldig swivelled to look at him. “Because of the light show out there?”

Jack answered for him: “No. It doesn’t do that. I’d say Farfarello probably neutralised the time paradox just by being here.”

“Farfarello!” Gwen kept yelling, trying to shake the Irishman awake, which jerked the others into action, walking out of their hideout, Ianto leaning heavily on Jack.

“He’s not waking up!” Gwen said, as soon as she saw first Schuldig who ran towards her and Crawford and then... she froze. “Ianto,” she choked, leaving her spot next to her charge to Schuldig and all but jumped her old friend and pulled him into a tight hug, sobbing.

Ianto returned the hug, control over his limbs slowly returning. “Good to see you,” he said, his voice still hoarse.

Gwen laughed a sob. “And you,” she said, framing his face.

 

“You are not in a position to fight, I see,” a hollow voice interrupted them from the side. The one side of the room where there had not been a door a moment ago.

Jack held Ianto close and glared at the two grey clothed figures standing in the room with every ounce of disgust he had; Gwen inched closer, holding Ianto’s hand; Schuldig, still kneeling on the floor, pulled an unconscious Farfarello into his lap... Crawford merely smirked.

“Do you find this amusing, Oracle?” the second person asked, as empty and hollow as the first.

“Yes, actually,” Crawford said. “I always suspected your precognition to be inferior to mine. Just not that inferior.”

“Precognition will not be necessary. To kill you, all that is needed is a telekinetic, and neither of us is susceptible to your telepath.”

Schuldig flinched. He also thought he recognised Crawford’s behaviour as buying them time, which was the only reason he didn’t challenge that claim.

The first person spoke again, and only now Gwen could make out a slight difference in the voice, realising that it was a woman speaking now, while the other had been a man.

“Your Berserker’s ability is slipping. His bubble won’t be protecting you any longer.”

Crawford’s smirk widened. “True. It also means that I can foresee _his_ future, now, too.”

The grey man snorted. “He will be out of the picture; that much is certain.”

Schuldig frowned, pulling the man in his lap closer. Maybe he had been wrong about Crawford buying them time...

“True,” Crawford confirmed, again.

Schuldig pulled Farfarello even closer, and while Gwen didn’t run right to his side, she did send an alarmed look to the unconscious man.

{Schuldig. Go.}

Schuldig blinked. That was... not any kind of telepathy he was familiar with. It felt... off.

{Go, now.}

The telepath’s eyes fell on the motionless figure he was holding, and, sure enough, the eyes opened just a sliver, golden light forcing its way out...

{GO!}

Schuldig jerked upright, pushed Farfarello out of his lap and darted to the rest of his team, just as...

... everything was glowing...

... bright gold light...

... Schuldig, Crawford, Ianto, Jack, Gwen being thrown across the room...

... all-consuming energy...

... Jack shielding his team with his own body between a corner and a table...

~

“STOP!” Omi yelled, bringing his team to a sudden halt. “Door!” he yelled at Nagi, who reacted on pure instinct, telekinetically ripping the first door out of its hinges and then shoving all of them into the room.

The last shred of the maddening and powerful presence in Omi’s mind was forced out of his head and around himself and the men with him.

Everything went blinding...

... and then dark.

~

Jack slowly lifted his head, noticing with relief that everybody he was shielding was starting to stir. The lack of sound felt as if they had been deafened by the blast, and there were bright dots dancing in front of his eyes from the flash.

It felt as if time had stopped. Time that had been rushing them for weeks, maybe even years, just to bring them to this point. Adrenaline slipped from them in waves with every breath they took.

Jack’s head tilted towards the man he had been holding close this entire time, and blue eyes looked back. Jack couldn’t stop the tears of joy that came, this time, either, not with his Ianto smiling at him.  
Four years. Over.

Schuldig was the first to stand, looking at the man lying in the middle of the floor, seemingly unharmed.  
Then his eyes then darted around as if following thoughts that should have been swirling around him throughout the building. But there weren’t any. He blinked.  
“Brad...?” he asked, quietly, confused.

The other man never got to answer the question. A sound interrupted their silent musings. A sound unlike anything Crawford and Schuldig had ever heard before... The Torchwood agents on the other hand lifted their heads, turning towards it.

There, right next to Farfarello, something appeared. Something... blue and square and...

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Schuldig blurted out.

Crawford sent a questioning gaze to Jack and tilted his head. “The Doctor?”

Jack only nodded, helping Ianto to his feet.

The door of the blue police box opened and a deceptively young looking man exited, wearing a suit and... sneakers. And more sorrow in his expression than Jack had ever seen on him before.

Schuldig blinked. “ _That_ is the doctor?” He didn’t really know what he had been expecting, but that certainly wasn’t it.

Before he acknowledged anybody else in the room, the Doctor knelt next to Farfarello and cupped his face with one hand. “I’m so sorry. So very sorry. It was an accident.”

Farfarello didn’t stir.

“Let it go, baby boy. It’s not yours to have,” the Doctor coaxed.

And Farfarello just did. There wasn’t much left in him, and he just... let it go into the Tardis’ welcoming heart. His body flinched once and then sagged.

Finally, Jack broke the silence. “What happened?”

The Doctor looked up. “It was an accident,” he repeated. “Fifteen years ago.” He looked at the body he was now holding. “He was never meant to carry parts of the Tardis, nobody is.”

“It didn’t kill him,” Jack noted.

Schuldig swivelled around at those words. “What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded. Farfarello had been on the brink of death this entire time? This was ridiculous!

“It wasn’t enough to kill him,” the Doctor said.

“Just enough to drive him insane,” Jack completed the sentence for him.

The Doctor lifted Farfarello and stood. “And I couldn’t locate him, because he distorted time.” He looked at the sleeping face. “Until now. In here.”

“Well, how come he only blew up, now?” Schuldig asked with his usual sense of tact. Jack scowled at him for it.

“Time isn’t linear,” the Doctor explained in a tone that at any other time would have been cheerful and full of wonder even after eternities, but was now only defeated. “The Tardis knows that and so did he. He knew that this circle was coming to an end.” He turned around and towards his police box.

“Hey!” Schuldig yelled. “You can’t just take him!”

Crawford put a calming hand on his shoulder. “There is nothing we can do for him, Schuldig. Not anymore.”

“Wait!” This time it was Jack doing the yelling. “What about the 456?”

The Doctor’s expression turned grim. “Leave them to me.”

Jack smiled crookedly. “And you couldn’t have done that four years ago?” He was impressed that he only sounded mildly accusing.

This made a part of the spark and cheer return and the Doctor grin while his eyes roamed over the unlikely team. “Everything’s as it’s supposed to be, Captain.” His smile widened when he saw the missing six enter the room. He locked eyes with Nagi, nodded at him once and disappeared inside the box.

Jack closed his eyes for the briefest moment. Maybe things were as they were supposed to be. But at what price? The machinations of time sometimes cost more than a human being could ever be willing to pay.

They all stared as the whole damn thing vanished while making that odd noise again, leaving nothing behind but confusion… but all Nagi could think of was, _‘I didn’t want to be rid of you.’_

 

Finally, after sharing relieved and dazed looks for the longest of moments, Youji ran a hand through his hair. “Do I even want to know what the fuck just happened?”

“Well,” Schuldig began, and Crawford rolled his eyes even before the man could say anything else, “Farfarello conveniently purged the whole bunker before galloping off to God knows where.” He considered that. “Or when,” he allowed.

“About damn time,” Aya said with feeling. His lip twitched at the dark looks he got from Schwarz. “I meant the purging, not the galloping off.” And he was telling the truth, too.

“This is going to be a media nightmare,” Ianto blurted out. “The paperwork alone will kill me.”

Jack all but sobbed another laugh. “You swing a mean pencil,” he said, kissing the man. “And I’m not leaving your side for a moment. I might even do some paperwork myself.”

“God forbid,” Gwen said, a bubbly laugh escaping her.

Ianto grinned at her. “He’s still bad at that, isn’t he?”

“I don’t give a fuck,” Jack declared. “I’m gonna take you on a long, a _very_ long, vacation.” He tilted his head. “Right after the paperwork is done.” Ianto’s answering laugh felt like all the cheesy things ever written in romance novels, and then some.

God. It was so good to have him back.

*

**Epilogue**

Jay slowly came to and opened his clear blue eyes to unfamiliar surroundings. He watched the man who was with him bounce back and forth between levers and lights and sounds.

Jumbling memories inside him twisted and turned. It was like watching a movie.

Then the man noticed that he was awake and came crouching next to him.

“Hello, Jay. I’m the Doctor.” He was all smiles and sparkling eyes.

“Hello.”

“What would you like to do today?” The Doctor asked, clapping his hands decisively.

Jay blinked. He wasn’t sure he knew how to answer that. It was like the part of him that could have answered had been asleep for a long time and was only just waking up.  
The memories weren’t as hazy, anymore, though, but even though he thought they probably should have, they didn’t frighten him.  
Maybe he should just... find something to do with himself? Something to be? He hardly knew who he was, anymore.

“Would you like to travel?”

Jay’s whole face lit up. Finding, discovering, seeing, experiencing. And all of that just for the sheer joy of exploring.  
“Yes, I would like that.”

The Doctor smiled.

 

**END**

_100607_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo... that was that :) Thanks for joining me on that ride (and thanks for all the fish) ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
> 
>  
> 
> I realise that the Who reference with the Tardis at the end might be a bit confusing (I'm sorry for not explaining it better, but it would have interrupted the narration.)  
>  **[This](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMX6WvtSPq8)** might help. It shows the Doctor's friend Rose with the Tardis inside of her and what she is capable of with it. (In the scene after that one, the Doctor removes it from her with a kiss.)


End file.
